Opposition members who did not commit violent acts should not be prosecuted and
imprisoned in connection with Armenia’s bloody post-election strife, President
Serzh Sarkisian told a visiting senior official from the Council of Europe on
Tuesday.

Sarkisian and Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human
rights, met at the end of the latter’s three-day fact-finding visit to Yerevan.
They discussed, among other things, the fate of dozens of supporters of former
President Levon Ter-Petrosian arrested following the March 1 clashes between
security forces and opposition protesters.

According to the presidential press service, Sarkisian said that “in his view,
law-enforcement bodies should bring charges only against those individuals who
were involved in violence.” It was unclear if he believes the most prominent of
the opposition detainees, including three members of parliament, should
therefore be set free.

Virtually all of those detainees stand accused only of “usurpation of state
power” and “incitement to mass disturbances.” In a June resolution on Armenia,
the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) questioned the credibility
of these accusations, saying that they should be dropped “unless there is strong
evidence that these persons have personally committed acts of violence or
serious other criminal offences.” Armenian courts ignored the PACE’s opinion,
prolong the pre-trial arrests of several closes Ter-Petrosian associates this
month.

Speaking at a news conference later in the day, Hammarberg said the Armenian
authorities should either put those oppositionists on trial or set them free. He
also complained about “slow progress” in law-enforcement bodies’ stated efforts
to clarify the precise circumstances in which two interior troops and eight
civilians were killed on March 1-2. The issue dominated Hammarberg’s separate
meeting on Tuesday with Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian.

According to a spokeswoman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General, Hovsepian
told the commissioner that three of the civilian victims were killed by tear gas
grenades wrongly fired by riot police. The official, Sona Truzian, told RFE/RL
that investigators still do not know which police officers were responsible for
those deaths.

Truzian confirmed that the five other civilians were killed by gunshots but
could not say who fired them. “We are still ascertaining the circle of
individuals who used firearms,” she said. Nor have the investigators charged
anyone with murdering the two interior troop servicemen, she added.

Sarkisian assured Hammarberg that his administration is committed to ensuring
that the ongoing criminal investigation is “objective, comprehensive and
impartial” but said it needs expert assistance from abroad. He also said the
Armenian government is doing its best to meet other PACE demands for the release
of opposition members arrested on “seemingly articifial charges” and respect for
freedom of assembly.

Hammarberg told journalists, however, that the government should do more to
address the Council of Europe concerns. He cast doubt on the independence and
credibility of an Armenian parliamentary commission tasked with investigating
the post-election unrest.

By Emil Danielyan and Ruzanna Stepanian