Armenia has arrested 19 of its nationals who were collecting intelligence about Yerevan's armed forces for a foreign spy network, the secret service said Thursday.

One of those arrested said in footage released by the secret service that he had allegedly spied for Azerbaijan, with whom Armenia's long-simmering conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh flared anew into war late last year.

The military intelligence department of Armenia's national security service said it had "arrested 19 people suspected of high treason, some of whom confessed."

It said that "a foreign secret service has set up a network that involved Armenian nationals, employees of the country's armed forces."

It added: "They had access to classified documents and were collecting information about Armenian military facilities, weapons, and personnel."

The statement gave no further detail.

In autumn 2020, the protracted territorial dispute over Azerbaijan's Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh region flared into an all-out war that claimed more than 6,500 lives.

The 44-day war ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement under which Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in December twice, in Moscow and Brussels, for rare face-to-face talks to discuss normalisation.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and an ensuing armed conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.

Related Links
All About Oil and Gas News at OilGasDaily.com

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Iraq $1.6 bn in arrears on Iran gas payments: minister
Baghdad (AFP) Feb 10, 2022
Iraq is $1.6 billion in arrears on its payments for imports of Iranian gas, its acting electricity minister has said, urging Washington to allow cash payments despite its Tehran sanctions. Despite its immense oil and gas reserves, Iraq remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs, and neighbouring Iran currently supplies a third of its gas and electricity under a tightly controlled waiver from US sanctions. The restrictions, imposed when Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran after pr ... read more