Ani Avetisyan has given her first public account of the morning an armed Azerbaijani soldier took over her home in the Syunik village of Shaki and held her children at gunpoint.
“If I hadn’t resisted, we wouldn’t have survived,” she said.
She was at a hotel in Sisian when one of her teenagers reached her, and she called the police and got into a car.
“For 15 minutes my children suffered in terror and were hostages,” she said. “I wasn’t scared, I went inside.”
Three Shots, and She Was Still Standing
Nasimi Musayev was holding the rifle over her children when she stepped forward, and the first shot he fired missed her.
He then turned the weapon on her son. She took hold of the rifle as the second shot went off, and it cost her the thumb of her left hand and seriously damaged her other fingers.
He threw her onto a bed and beat her. She told her daughter to open the gate and tried to get her son out of the house, but he would not leave her.
When Musayev aimed again she pushed the barrel down, and the third shot hit her leg. She fought him off with a kitchen knife until he reloaded and ran, and her children told her he was gone. Police caught him elsewhere in the village shortly afterward.
She had no idea he was Azerbaijani. “He didn’t make a sound,” she said.
Nobody Told the Village
Azerbaijani authorities say Musayev left his unit in Lachin on September 26, and Armenia’s National Security Service says Baku notified it on September 29 that a serviceman had gone missing and might have crossed into Armenia. He attacked Avetisyan’s family on October 1.
Shaki sits at least 20 kilometers from the nearest stretch of the border, so for 2 days Armenian authorities knew an armed Azerbaijani serviceman might be inside the country while the people living there were told nothing.
“If they had warned us, I wouldn’t have sent the children to school,” Avetisyan said. “We wouldn’t have stayed in Shaki.”
She called the police before she left the hotel. “Before I even got into the car, I had called the police, but they arrived after everything was over,” she said.
Officers reached the house after she did, and she pointed out that the Sisian police station is closer to Shaki than the hotel she had driven from. “How could they not have come running right away after the alert?” she said.
The Prime Minister Said She Should Have Waited
Nikol Pashinyan addressed the attack in the National Assembly on October 7, describing it as an ordinary criminal incident.
“I understand that maternal instinct is strong, but when you call the police, you must wait for the police to act,” he said, suggesting that had the family waited, most likely nothing would have happened.
Avetisyan was asked about waiting. “If I had waited for the police, it would have been worse,” she said.
Hovhannes Kocharyan, a lawyer and former deputy police chief, assessed her actions the day after Pashinyan spoke, saying that if the children’s lives were under threat then what she did falls squarely within the legal right of necessary defense.
“It is not only lawful, but should be encouraged,” Kocharyan said.
Necessity has to be judged by the situation, he said, and disarming an attacker or striking him in the process is covered by that right. Waiting would have made sense only if the danger had already been neutralized, and where a child is being aimed at with no opportunity to wait, he said that argument is vulnerable.
The Government Removed Officials, and Parliament Stopped Short
Pashinyan dismissed Davit Sanamyan, the National Security Service deputy chief who oversaw border guards in the area, on October 5. Colonel Artsvik Grigoryan, a deputy commander of the army’s Special Corps, was later relieved of his duties by presidential decree at Pashinyan’s initiative, and a local military police chief was dismissed.
The National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defense and Security held an extraordinary meeting on October 12, convened by members Gegham Manukyan, Garnik Davtyan, Anush Mirzoyan and Vahagn Vardanov, who proposed requesting written clarifications from the defense and interior ministers and the NSS director on what rules were broken, why the serviceman was not detected in time, and what should change.
Committee chairman Vilen Gabrielyan questioned the logic of the draft and asked what the committee itself had failed to do. After the discussion the author withdrew it, and no decision was adopted.
He Faces 5 Charges and Baku Calls It Desertion
Musayev is in pretrial detention for 2 months on 5 charges: illegally crossing the state border, smuggling military-use products, firearms and ammunition, illegal trafficking in firearms and ammunition, illegal entry into another person’s residence against their will, and causing grievous bodily harm under aggravating circumstances with a firearm. Azerbaijan has charged him with desertion.
The Investigative Committee recognized Avetisyan and both children as victims in the criminal case on October 12.
The Children Are Still Waiting for Help
“A psychologist came, talked to the children, and left,” Avetisyan said. “They didn’t come back.”
Her mother said the psychologist promised a car would be sent for the children and none came. Her son has had surgery on his hand, and neither child has been able to return to school.
She Faces 3 More Surgeries
Avetisyan, 39, is being treated at the Surb Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center in Yerevan, where her leg is stabilized with metal hardware and she cannot move it. She is in constant pain and receiving injected painkillers, faces 3 more operations and expects to remain in hospital for the next 2 to 3 months.
Her children are staying with their grandparents in Yerevan and come to the hospital every day. “The children came here in the clothes they had on,” her mother said, adding that the family spends close to 20,000 drams a day on the visits. “My husband and I are both pensioners.”
Asked what she needs, Avetisyan did not talk about herself. “At this moment I would only want my children to have a corner of their own,” she said. “I rent where I live.”
“I have two future soldiers,” she said of her sons.
