Armenian soldier charged with espionage

| News, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh

On 25 May, the Armenia's National Security Service (NSS) announced the arrest of a member of the armed forces accused of espionage and high treason.

The serviceman, named only as D.G., is accused of passing information to a foreign intelligence service concerning the fighting locations of a military unit stationed near Armenia's state boundary, as well as their equipment, weapons, and the number of soldiers on duty. According to the NSS, the Armenian serviceman met a foreign secret service employee on Facebook in January 2022 and was recruited.

After that, from January to March, he collected information that constituted state and official secrets- such as the location of combat positions, the number of combat duty personnel, as well as other data and transmitted it to the representative of the foreign intelligence service via WhatsApp and Messenger. The NSS said D.G. is accused of espionage to the detriment of the territorial integrity of Armenia and its national security. The serviceman was paid 200 US dollars by the foreign intelligence service. The NSS said the serviceman was detained and then arrested as part of the criminal case launched by its Investigative Department. The serviceman is said to have confessed and was charged with espionage and high treason based on obtained evidence.

In early March, a former battalion commander of the Armenian Armed Forces was accused of fleeing during combat during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. This was reported by the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic. According to the agency, the accused, being at the height of Khurat near Hadrut, allegedly did not fulfil the duties of a soldier on October 10 and fled from his position, leaving his subordinates. Many soldiers from his battalion died, were injured, or went missing.

In February 2022, the Armenian National Security Service (NSS) declared that a spy network operating in the nation has been uncovered and eliminated. Hundreds of Armenian military are said to have been involved. 19 individuals have been arrested and some confessed. The network, according to the NSS, was developed by foreign intelligence services. One of the police officers stressed in his statement, which was published by the department's press staff, that he met "with employees of the special services of Azerbaijan" on Facebook. The spies pretended to be Armenian women on social media and recruited their targets by convincing them that their online friends would engage in "intimate interactions."

In December 2021, five of the ten former POWs were accused of "violating the norms of service." The Armenian Investigative Committee filed a request to detain them. A judge has already authorised the detention of one soldier, while a petition to detain a second soldier has been denied. On December 7, a video surfaced in which Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan condemned "deserters" and claimed that Armenian POWs :no longer exist" for him.

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