We prevented the attack on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the National Security Service of Armenia informed on Saturday. Opposition leader Artur Wanecjan was detained on the charge of preparing the murder of the head of government.
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The National Security Service (SNB) said on Saturday that its officers had discovered that weapons, ammunition and explosives had been illegally purchased and stored by a group of people intending to seize power in Armenia. In a communiqué, the SNB said that these people, disagreeing with the state’s domestic and foreign policy, intended to seize power by killing Nikol Pashinyan.
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Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol PashinyanARMENIA GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE/EPE/PAP
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Opposition leader detained
Earlier, the lawyer of one of the opposition leaders and former head of the SNB, Artur Vanetian, said that he had been detained on charges of trying to usurp power and prepared the assassination of the prime minister.
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“Artur Wanecjan was summoned to the investigative department of the SNB and detained today,” said Lusine Saakjan, a lawyer for the opposition, on Facebook. She called the actions of the authorities political persecution. Vanetian was in a group of 10 opposition party leaders detained on Thursday for organizing a protest, whose participants called on Pashinyan to resign due to the agreement on a truce in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was unfavorable for Armenia. They were later released, reported the Russian TASS agency.
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Truce in Nagorno-Karabakh
Massive protests, whose participants call Pashinyan a “traitor,” began in Yerevan after the prime minister signed a truce agreement in the disputed region. Under it, Armenia is withdrawing from some of the territories previously controlled and inhabited by ethnic Armenians, and Russia’s peacekeeping forces enter the region. The internationally unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian inhabited and controlled area located in the de jure territories of Azerbaijan. After 27 years of relative peace, Azerbaijan attacked Armenian territory in September, claiming that there had been an Armenian provocation earlier.
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photo-source">Main photo source: ARMENIA GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE/EPE/PAP
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