Yesterday morning the commander of the separate battalion of Shushi Jirair Sefilyan was released from Vardashen Prison after spending 1.5 years in prison for carrying illegal weapon. Reminder: Sefilyan had been arrested and charged with calling for a violent overthrow of the government in December 2006 just days after setting up a new pressure group opposed to Armenian territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. A Yerevan court found Sefilyan guilty on that count and sentenced him to two years in prison in August 2007. The court cleared Sefilyan of the charge but still jailed him for 18 months for illegally possessing a pistol which he had received as a gift from a former commander of the Karabakh Armenian army. During the past 1.5 years the statements made by numerous politicians to curtail the punishment term of Sefilyan remained unanswered on part of the government and he spent the whole sentence term in prison.
