05 September, 2008

A senior Republican lawmaker leading a parliamentary probe into the March 1 deadly clashes between security forces and opposition protesters in Yerevan has expressed disappointment over the investigation.

“It is the first time I express my discontent with the work of a state body,” said Samvel Nikoyan, the chairman of the National Assembly’s ad hoc commission.

Nikoyan had addressed a number of questions to the Police requesting information on a number of circumstances. In particular, he had requested a full list of police workers involved in the March 1-2 events in Yerevan and types of weapons or special means that had been assigned to them, details as to how those weapons or means were used on those days (such as how many shots were fired). Also, he inquired whether there had been an order to fire at protesters and if there had been such an order, then who had made it and on what legal grounds. The parliamentarian also challenged the police to provide legitimate grounds for the unavoidability of the use of arms.

The Police informed the commission in writing that full detailed information had been provided by the Special Investigative Service. The written reply also mentioned that there had been no order from anyone to shoot at protesters.

During the previous sitting of the commission, Deputy Chief of Police Alexander Afyan said that 120-130 workers participated in the operation in Liberty Square in the early morning of March 1.

To the question of commission member Artsvik Minasyan as to who led the March 1 operation and who had given an order to the operative group, Afyan said: “I gave the order after that incident for maintaining public order, connected with the morning events.”

As to whether he had received an order from a superior or not, the deputy police chief said that he had been appointed to the operative staff and it was incumbent upon him to maintain public order.
The Police also provided the commission with a video footage pertaining to police actions. Nikoyan had requested more footage as the one provided seemed incomplete to him, but his request was rejected.
“They have nothing else besides this two-minute-long low-quality video footage,” says Nikoyan. “My questions proceed from the National Assembly decisions by which the commission was set up. We cannot accomplish our duties with such answers.”
Shota Vardanyan, who heads the Scientific-Practical Center of Expert Examinations of the Ministry of Health, presented to the commission the results of forensic expert examinations regarding cases of deaths and of bodily harm.
“We have conducted an expert examination of 125 people on an outpatient basis, 140 people on an inpatient basis as well as 10 dead bodies. Among police and military personnel 34 people received shrapnel wounds and one received a gunshot wound. Ten protesters received gunshot wounds and six shrapnel wounds,” says Vardanyan.
The center’s director also explained why Members of Parliament Vardan Khachatryan, Zaruhi Postanjyan and Larisa Alaverdyan were not allowed to enter the mortuary on that day, which gave rise to allegations that the real number of deaths was higher.
“We did not allow them. Our division manager and the one on duty that day did not allow them and did the right thing. What is a parliamentarian’s business there at that hour when no one enters the mortuary? If there was a need for dissecting, for results, they could have come, introduced themselves and we would have allowed them to make their way to the mortuary. And we would have said how many dead bodies there were,” Vardanyan says.

According to him, on that day they also had people who died in unrelated circumstances. And he says he did not allow the presence of parliamentarians because, as he says, they would later present a person who died from a heart attack as a March 1 victim.

MP Vardan Khachatryan, of the opposition Heritage faction, says that those in charge could easily explain that at the mortuary there were also bodies of people who had died in car accidents or because of natural causes.
“We were absolutely denied any access and that was done in an arbitrary way, since they could not present any legitimate reasons for denying entrance to us saying that they simply did not allow us. There was no word about a late hour. We even asked them to take our written statement to forward it to their superiors the following morning. They also refused to take that paper in which we stated our request for access to the mortuary to see the bodies of victims,” Khachatryan says.
This incident and further developments led Heritage MP Postanjyan to suspect that something had been hidden.

“After that I sent a written request for information. It was rejected as they said I could apply to the special investigative service. Then I applied to the health minister asking him for information from the mortuary registers containing data on bringing in and taking out of bodies. My request was rejected again as they said it constituted a medical secret. I received the same answer also from the justice minister in reply to my parliamentary inquiry addressed to the prime minister. Meanwhile, a medical secret concerns a living person’s treatment and not these data.”

Shota Vardanyan categorically denies that the number of deaths was higher, saying that it is impossible to hide dead bodies. According to him, registers containing “medical secret” were shown to representatives of the Council of Europe to prove wrong their claims about 38 dead bodies.

The Police officially informed the commission that they had 41 injured during the predawn action on March 1. According to Vardanyan, who refers to data registered on the basis of forensic expertise, there were 24 injured policemen. According to Nikoyan, the commission will assume the validity of data of forensic experts.

“One can use only forensic expert conclusions to state how many policemen were injured. Forgive me, but the Police is a concerned party in this matter and may even claim that the number of injured policemen reaches a hundred,” Nikoyan says.

By Gayane Mkrtchyan