Russian serviceman Valery Permyakov who killed a family of seven in Armenia’s second largest city Gyumri in January a year ago was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday.
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A Russian military court last year sentenced Permyakov to 10 years in a high-security prison for deserting his base. A family of six was killed by Valery Permyakov in Gyumri, Armenia, on Jan 12, 2015.
The massacre of the family led to mass protests in Gyumri and in Yerevan against Russia’s military presence in Armenia.
After months of uncertainly, in June a year ago, Russia agreed to an Armenian trial of Permyakov, but the accused continued to be kept in Russian custody in the territory of the local garrison.
The court sentenced Valery Permyakov to life imprisonment.
“The Russian soldier will not serve his sentence in Armenia, but rather, he will be sent to Russia”.
Russian authorities eventually turned Permyakov over to Armenian authorities to be tried for murder under Armenian law.
During the investigation and court proceedings the defendant said that he made a decision to desert his unit because he had grown homesick and wanted to reunite with his family living in a small town in eastern Siberia.
Lawyers also raised questions over a number of circumstances of the case which they claimed left room for suspicions that Permyakov may not have acted alone.
The base is about 120 kilometers northwest of Yerevan.
It has served as a Russian garrison town since the tsarist period.
The historic city of 125,000 people has suffered from high unemployment and widespread poverty since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continues to harbor several thousand IDPs displaced by the natural disaster more than a quarter century ago.
The murder of the Avetisyan was only the latest deadly incident involving Russian servicemen in Gyumri.
Permyakov, who has undergone several psychiatric tests and has been ruled sane, has pleaded guilty but the reasons behind the murders remain unclear. He claimed to have planned to cross into Turkey with the aim of returning to Russian Federation.
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Russian and Armenian troops jointly patrol Armenia’s borders with Turkey and Iran.
