EXCLUSIVE DETAILS: How Villagers Disarmed an Azerbaijani with a Knife

Residents of the village of Ashotavan in Syunik province shared details about disarming an Azerbaijani soldier who crossed into Armenia's territory during a conversation with a NEWS.am reporter. A young man, who preferred to remain anonymous, recounted that on the evening of April 10, they were sitting in a parked car when they noticed a suspicious young man walking around the village with a knife in hand.

They stopped him and asked a few questions in Russian; initially, he pretended to be mute but then spoke a few words in English. The locals understood that he was Azerbaijani, disarmed him, and with the help of the only person in the village who knows Turkish, 83-year-old Volodya Muradyan, began to converse with him.

“He said, 'I am 19 years old.' According to him, they had escaped three days ago. He claimed they were three, but two remained in the forest. He said the situation is very bad for them, that they are treated poorly by their command, almost like animals, and that’s why they fled. He mentioned that he had left his weapon near the river. My grandson found the weapon in the morning,” Volodya Muradyan told the media.

Before being apprehended, the Azerbaijani soldier had wandered through greenhouses and entered several houses, raiding basements for apples and canned goods. The villagers caught him in civilian clothes; he changed out of his military uniform and left it in one of the houses.

“He entered my friend’s house, wore his shoes, and handled the food, possibly poisoning it; we don’t know, but we threw it all away. We searched for his accomplice with police and Defense Ministry officials all night but couldn’t find him. He claims he has escaped, but if that were true, they would have gone to the village behind their positions, not here,” one Ashotavan resident recounted.

The Azerbaijani also removed a screen from the window of resident Arevik Ohanyan’s house but was unable to enter. He went to the basement and helped himself to the canned food.

For more details, visit the original source.