The government’s press service did not say who will head the commission or where Siradeghian will be buried. It told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that details of the planned ceremonies will be made public after a date is set for his funeral.
Neither Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian nor any member of his government has issued so far statements of condolence to the family of a man who is still technically wanted by Armenian law-enforcement bodies for grave crimes allegedly committed by him in the 1990s.
The death of the 74-year-old Siradeghian was announced by his wife and son at the weekend. They did not specify its cause or reveal his last place of residence.
A former novelist, Siradeghian was one of the leaders of a popular movement for Armenia’s unification with Nagorno-Karabakh who came to power in 1990. He became one of the newly independent country’s most powerful men when serving as interior minister in the administration of its first President Levon Ter-Petrosian from 1992-1996.
Siradeghian was dogged by opposition allegations of corruption and police abuses during and after his tenure. He denied them.
One year after Ter-Petrosian resigned in 1998, Siradeghian was charged with ordering a string of contract killings. State prosecutors claimed that he set up in the early 1990s a death squad to terrorize opponents of the Ter-Petrosian administration.
In July 2000, two members of the alleged gang were sentenced to death while seven others got jail terms ranging from 4 to 11 years. One month later, eleven former officers of Armenian interior troops were given lengthy sentences after a Yerevan court convicted them of murdering two men in 1995.
Siradeghian strongly denied ordering those killings. The former interior minister and his supporters insisted that the charges were fabricated as part of then President Robert Kocharian’s efforts to neutralize his political foes.
Siradeghian fled Armenia in April 2000 ahead of the Armenian parliament’s decision to allow law-enforcement authorities to arrest him. Although the authorities had Siradeghian placed on Interpol’s wanted list, his whereabouts always remained unknown to the public.
Siradeghian lived abroad under a new and false name, according to Khachatur Sukiasian, a wealthy businessman and pro-Pashinian parliamentarian who has long been close to the ex-minister.
This is why, Sukiasian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday, repatriating his body is now fraught with some “difficulties.” “There are technical and legal issues,” he said.
The tycoon did not deny having kept in touch with Siradeghian for the past two decades. He too did not name the country where the latter lived.
Throughout his exile Siradeghian continued to enjoy the strong backing of Ter-Petrosian and members of the ex-president’s entourage. In a weekend statement, Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) party praised Siradeghian’s literary and political legacy and deplored the “trumped-up” charges brought against him during Kocharian’s rule.