YEREVAN. May 11 (Interfax) - Armenian President Armen Sarkissian signed decrees on Thursday to appoint Valery Osipyan as the head of the country's police and Artur Vanetsyan as the director of the National Security Service (NSS), as proposed earlier by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the presidential press service said.
Vanetsyan was in charge of a National Security Service department in a district of Yerevan.
Before, Colonel Osipyan was deputy chief at the metropolitan police.
Osipyan oversaw all of the actions of the police force during mass riots and conducted talks with demonstrators at the time.
Osipyan was also among those held hostage by members of the Sasna Tsrer group of gunmen that seized a police and interior ministry troops compound in Yerevan's Erebuni district in July 2016. The gunmen demanded the release of Jirair Sefilian, a coordinator of the civic opposition initiative 'Founding Parliament'.
Pashinyan also participated in the talks with Sasna Tsrer in July 2016.