Law-enforcement authorities have still not arrested or charged anyone in
connection with the recent murder of a senior Armenian prosecutor, the Office of
the Prosecutor-General said on Wednesday.

Albert Ghazarian, the chief prosecutor of the northern Lori region, was gunned
down outside his home in the regional capital Vanadzor on August 26. Armenia’s
three main law-enforcement bodies pledged to save no effort to solve the
extraordinary crime, forming a joint team of investigators.

They have so far avoided publicly commenting on possible theories of the crime,
saying only that it was the result of Ghazarian’s professional activities. One
of those theories revolves around the late prosecutor’s tense relationship with
Lori’s formed longtime Governor Henrik Kochinian and Vanadzor Mayor Samvel
Darpinian and his extended family. Both men are among local government officials
figuring in a embezzlement case brought by the Lori prosecutor’s office in June.

In what was widely seen as an attempt to implicate Darpinian and his extended
family in Ghazarian’s murder, police arrested last month a 24-year-old nephew of
the mayor, Arman Darpinian, on charges of illegal arms possession. They also
rounded up and questioned employees of a Vanadzor restaurant owned by the young
man. Several of the employees claimed afterwards that investigators beat and
intimidated them in order to force them to accuse their boss of orchestrating
the killing.

The Office of the Prosecutor-General initially denied the embarrassing
allegations but later pledged to investigate them as the scandal gained a public
resonance. A spokeswoman for the law-enforcement agency, Sona Truzian, told
RFE/RL that a relevant criminal case has already been formally opened but that
nobody has been accused of torture yet.

Truzian also insisted that neither Arman Darpinian nor anybody else are
officially considered to be suspects in the murder inquiry.

 

By Karine Kalantarian