A senior police officer acknowledged on Tuesday that Gagik Jahangirian put up
no resistance during his arrest, contradicting the accusation leveled against
the former deputy prosecutor-general who broke ranks last year to openly support
the Armenian opposition.

Jahangirian was sacked and arrested the day after delivering a fiery speech at
an opposition rally in which he accused the Armenian authorities of rigging the
February 19 presidential election and described opposition candidate Levon
Ter-Petrosian as its rightful winner.

Jahangirian was ambushed and taken away by a special police unit along with his
disabled brother Vartan and two other men as they left Yerevan in a car. Police
said at the time that the four men were armed and planned to “destabilize the
situation in the capital.” Vartan Jahangirian was shot and wounded during the
operation and is now being tried separately.

Gagik Jahangirian was initially accused of illegal arms possession, a charge
that was subsequently dropped and changed to an attempt to “usurp state power.”
He was cleared of the coup charge as well in August only to be accused under
another article of the Armenian Criminal Code dealing with assaults on
“representatives of the state authority.” His high-profile trial started on
September 1.

Karen Babakekhian, deputy chief of the feared Sixth Directorate of the Armenian
who personally ordered the Jahangirians’ arrest, was questioned for about two
hours during a court hearing on Tuesday. “I was not present at the scene of the
incident, but from what I was told, Mr. Jahangirian did not resist,” Babakekhian
stated, adding that the latter willingly handed his officially registered pistol
to police officers.

When asked by a defense lawyer why the once powerful ex-prosecutor was taken
into custody, Babakekhian said, “Mr. Jahangirian was held after his brother put
up resistance and he stepped in, yelling at officers and saying that his brother
has back problems. And that’s how a scuffle began.”

Jahangirian’s brother suffers from a serious spinal disorder and can walk only
on crutches. Both he and the ex-prosecutor claim to have been tortured at the
headquarters’ of Babakekhian’s police unit. The police deny ill-treating them.

The police official’s testimony dealt a further blow to prosecutors’ assurances
that the case is not politically motivated. Jahangirian seized on it to again
declare that his arrest was illegal and demand that the judge order his release.
“The police actions were illegal right from the beginning,” he said.

“Babakekhian admitted today that he was not guided by any law,” the defendant’s
lawyer, Lusine Sahakian, told RFE/RL. “They just wanted to detain Gagik
Jahangirian and they did it.”