khosq.com

Pro-government lawmakers openly questioned on Friday the official
justification for the forcible dispersal of opposition protesters
camped in Yerevan’s Liberty Square last February as it emerged that
there were no fingerprints on weapons which the Armenian police claim
to have found there.

Opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian and his supporters built a
tent camp and held non-stop demonstrations in the square following the
February 19 presidential election which they believe was rigged in
favor of establishment candidate Serzh Sarkisian. Riot police broke up
the protest early on March 1, setting the stage for deadly clashes with
thousands of protesters elsewhere in central Yerevan later in the day.

The Armenian government and law-enforcement bodies claim that the
police decided to use force only after the protesters refused to let
them search the square for weapons allegedly stashed by opposition
leaders there. Senior police officials involved in the operation
reiterated this version of events in their testimonies to an ad hoc
commission of Armenia’s parliament investigating the post-election
turmoil.

Suren Manukian, head of the forensic examinations department at the
national police, was the latest law-enforcement official to testify
before the commission. He said security forces confiscated three
pistols, an unspecified number of hand grenades, “large quantities of
ammunition,” as well as Molotov cocktails and iron bars.

“Specialists who inspected those objects found no usable
fingerprints on them,” Manukian said, leading the commission chairman,
Samvel Nikoyan, to wonder if the firearms can be used as incriminating
evidence in the ongoing criminal investigation into what the
authorities say was a coup plot hatched by Ter-Petrosian. “That is up
to the investigating body to decide,” responded the police official.

“In essence, there is no proof of who that stuff belonged to,”
Nikoyan commented before asking, “Could you please tell me what
conclusion I should draw from this?” “That is beyond my
responsibility,” replied Manukian.

Another commission member, Artsvik Minasian of the governing
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), explicitly stated
that the weapons allegedly found in Liberty Square can not be used to
substantiate the government accusations in court. “It was declared that
huge quantities of weapons and ammunition were handed out [to
protesters,] but forensic tests showed that the quantities were not
huge,” he said. “And even assuming that they were handed out, they can
not serve as evidence.”

“This seems to prove the theory that the police actions had
elements of disproportionateness,” Minasian told RFE/RL. “This is my
subjective view … As far as supporting evidence is concerned, the
situation is quite sad.”

The official justification for the use of force has also been
dismissed by Armen Harutiunian, the state human rights ombudsman. “If
fleeing demonstrators left guns behind them, then why is it that during
their dispersal, which was accompanied by beatings and resistance, not
a single gunshot was fired?” Harutiunian asked in an extensive report
released in late April.