Armenia’s ‘Daredevils’ end siege after bloody weekend

An armed group opposed to Armenia's president and government has ended a fortnight-long siege of a police station in the capital, Yerevan, after a weekend of violence.

Police said the so-called Daredevils of Sassoun surrendered on Sunday night and left the facility that they seized on July 17th. They had demanded the resignation of the president, Serzh Sargsyan, and the release from jail of a fringe opposition leader.

One police officer was killed in the Daredevils’ initial attack, but thousands of Armenians joined rallies to support their demands and call for a peaceful resolution to the siege.

On Friday night, scores of protesters were injured and more than 100 detained when police used truncheons and stun grenades against a march of several thousand people in Yerevan.

On Saturday, police said one of their officers had been shot dead by the Daredevils while sitting in a patrol car several hundred metres from the besieged police station; a leader of the gang denied that his men were responsible, however.

The policeman was killed as Armenia’s security services issued an ultimatum to the gunmen to surrender, otherwise “special units of the law enforcement agencies will be authorised to open fire without warning”.

The deadline passed without any immediate police action, and on Saturday evening thousands of protesters marched towards the presidential and government headquarters.

In a tense face-off riot police blocked the protesters and, as fears of violence grew, one man in the crowd poured petrol on his clothes and set himself alight, before the flames were doused and he was taken to hospital.

Police said that on Sunday afternoon two more gunmen surrendered and left the police station, and another was shot and wounded.

About 20 of the 31-strong gang that seized the police station remained inside until Sunday evening. Several were wounded in earlier fire-fights and taken to hospital under police guard, and medics who entered the building to treat the injured were allegedly held hostage for several days before being released.

Armenian folklore

The Daredevils of Sassoun – who take their name from an epic of Armenian folklore – demanded the release from prison of opposition leader

Jirair Sefilian

, who has sharply criticised Mr Sargsyan and his government.

Mr Sefilian and several allies were arrested in June for allegedly plotting an armed uprising against the authorities.

The men – who deny the accusations – denounced Mr Sargsyan's handling of a surge in fighting in April around Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that is officially part of Azerbaijan but which has been run by ethnic Armenians with Yerevan's support since a war in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan retook a small slice of territory during clashes that reportedly killed more than 100 Azeri and Armenian soldiers, and threatened to spark a return to all-out war in a sensitive Caucasus region ringed by Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Mr Sefilian is not a major opposition leader, but recent events have rekindled widespread public dissatisfaction with the perceived corruption, wealth and unaccountability of Armenia’s political elite.