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ArmLand adventure club founder Artyom Martirosyan was summoned to the police due to a complaint of employees of Lydian International, the owner of the controversial Amulsar gold mine, after a 35-member group of travelers climbed to Amulsar mountain on 29 September.

Speaking to Panorama.am, Martirosyan said the complaint was based on “intrusion into a private territory and suspicion of theft and damage to equipment.”

“I gave explanations. All my actions on the mountain were for the safety of the expedition group. While climbing the mountain we saw no signboard saying it’s a private territory,” he said.

“A mountain cannot be a private territory, we, mountaineers, don’t accept the principle of privatizing a mountain. Mountains are open to all, and we, the citizens of Armenia, are free to climb our mountains,” Martirosyan stressed.

Asked whether they had been warned against climbing Amulsar, he said: “No, no one warned us of anything before climbing the mountain."

The mountaineer said they climb different mountains of the Armenian Highland every week and a trip to Amulsar was a regular event. 

He said they had faced no such problem before, even in Turkey. The group climbed Amulsar for the first time.