Armenia’s Court of Appeals has annulled an arrest warrant against a senior law-enforcement official who led a criminal investigation into the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan during former President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule.
The official, Vahagn Harutiunian, was charged in late October with forging factual evidence to cover up the Armenian army’s involvement in the deadly break of opposition protests staged in the wake of a disputed presidential election.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) started alleging such involvement following this spring’s mass protests that toppled Sarkisian. It now says that Sarkisian’s outgoing predecessor, Robert Kocharian, illegally ordered army units into the streets of Yerevan before declaring a state of emergency on March 1, 2008.
Last week, Kocharian was arrested on charges of overthrowing Armenia’s constitutional order. He strongly denies them.
On November 2, a district court in Yerevan allowed the SIS to arrest Harutiunian pending investigation. The latter left Armenia for Russia in July, ostensibly to undergo medical treatment.
The Court of Appeals overturned the district court ruling late on Wednesday. It did not immediately publicize reasons for the decision.
Harutiunian rejected the charges leveled against him as “unfounded, illegal and fabricated” when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian service by phone on November 1. He insisted that his team of investigators never found any evidence of illegal actions taken by the Armenian military during the 2008 unrest.
Harutiunian’s lawyer, Mihran Poghosian, said that the SIS has failed to substantiate the accusations. Poghosian also claimed that Armenian courts are under “unprecedented pressure” to rubber-stamp decisions made by the SIS.
Harutiunian’s team failed to identify anyone responsible for the deaths of eight protesters and two police servicemen in vicious clashes that broke out in central Yerevan on March 1, 2008. Instead, its inquiry led to the arrest and imprisonment of dozens of opposition figures involved in those protests. They included Nikol Pashinian, who became Armenia’s prime minister after launching another protest movement that forced Sarkisian to resign in April.
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