The Armenian police have made several arrests in connection with a weekend explosion near the Yerevan apartment of Gagik Khachatrian, head of the State Revenue Committee.
The blast was reportedly caused by a homemade explosive device planted in a construction site adjacent to Khachatrian’s apartment block in the city center. In a statement earlier this week the police said they found 400 grams of explosive material and a radio at the scene, suggesting that only the bomb’s detonator was set off by a radio signal.
“Consider the case to have been solved,” Major-General Alik Sargsian, chief of the national police, told RFE/RL on Thursday. “There will soon be a statement, we are working on it now. We are holding people who have a direct connection with the case.”
Sargsian would not say if police investigators regard the blast as a failed attempt on Khachatrian’s life.
Senior tax officials in Armenia have fallen victim to deadly attacks in the past. One of them, Shahen Hovasapian, died in a bomb attack outside his Yerevan home in September 2006. In September 2001, a grenade blast similarly killed Gagik Poghosian, then chief of the Armenian tax collection agency. Nobody is known to have been tried and convicted of organizing and committing those killings.
“Consider the case to have been solved,” Major-General Alik Sargsian, chief of the national police, told RFE/RL on Thursday. “There will soon be a statement, we are working on it now. We are holding people who have a direct connection with the case.”
Sargsian would not say if police investigators regard the blast as a failed attempt on Khachatrian’s life.
Senior tax officials in Armenia have fallen victim to deadly attacks in the past. One of them, Shahen Hovasapian, died in a bomb attack outside his Yerevan home in September 2006. In September 2001, a grenade blast similarly killed Gagik Poghosian, then chief of the Armenian tax collection agency. Nobody is known to have been tried and convicted of organizing and committing those killings.