YEREVAN. – The pretrial arrest of Misak Lazaryan, who has been wanted by Russian law enforcement for 9 years, has been commuted. His lawyer Arkadi Gevorgyan informed Armenian News-NEWS.am about this.

"The prosecutor's office [of the Republic of Armenia (RA)] has lifted the arrest, taking into account two circumstances," the lawyer said. “One is that we were saying there is an administrative proceeding related to the asylum, and the extradition function is not possible to carry out at the moment; moreover, the Migration Service has decided to suspend the administrative proceedings. And the other basis is that a criminal case has been filed against Misak under Article 325, Part 1 of the RA Criminal Code—that is, for using a false document—which is the basis for postponing the extradition process; that is, they can't discuss the issue of extradition until the final process of the case is resolved."

Misak Lazaryan is wanted by Russia for the murder of an Azerbaijani in Russia. The incident took place in 2011. Lazaryan's father told Armenian News-NEWS.am that Misak and his friend heard in a restaurant that an Azerbaijani man was speaking inappropriately about Armenians, after which they got into an argument with him. After that, the Azerbaijani man returned to the restaurant with a gun, along with several other people, the Armenians took the gun away, but the Azerbaijani was killed as a result of their shooting. After the incident, Misak Lazaryan moved to Armenia, a year ago he was apprehended by the National Security Service, and in March of this year he was reported to the Russian side. Misak Lazaryan was apprehended before the issue of his extradition would resolve.