Armenia: fact-finding group looks for crime attributes in police actions

The newly-published report of the fact-finding group on March 1 events states that it is necessary to examine the actions of the persons who gave and executed the order to use special gas "Cheryomukha-7" against peaceful demonstrators on March 1, 2008, in Yerevan, for crime attributes, in particular, under Article 34-104 of the Criminal Code "Attempt of deliberate murder".

We remind you that on March 1 last year as a result of using "Cheryomukha-7" by policemen, two civilians and one military were lost.

The report, handed over to the temporary parliamentary commission for studying the events on March 1, notes that the order to use special gas that was given by Gegam Petrosyan, former commander of police internal troops and chief of staff, Bagrat Khachatryan, commander of special-purpose unit of police internal troops, Martiros Davranyan, deputy commander of that unit, and Armen Antonyan, commander of Military Unit No. 1033, was against the purpose of this special weapon as specified in respective manuals.

"Members of the group in charge of using special weapons A. Atabekyan, L. Akopyan, M. Garibyan and V. Saakyan, knowing that the order of their bosses to use 'Cheryomukha-7' was illegal, nevertheless, executed the order. Later Garibyan and Saakyan confessed that they knew about their mission to shoot gas grenades with the above special weapon; however, they executed the order," runs the report.

The members of the fact-finding group note that, according to point 2, Article 47 of the Criminal Code, the person who has executed an illegal order shall bear responsibility.

As a result of investigating the circumstances of the use of "Cheryomukha-7", the group has concluded that policemen had also broken the procedure of using special weapons. Namely, the participants of the protest action were not warned about use thereof. Thus, according to the law "On Police Troops", people should be warned twice about forthcoming use of special weapons.

The group also insists on legal assessment of law enforcers' actions applied to witness Khachik Davtyan, who stated that his confession about participation in violent actions against policemen was received under torture: one of the policemen damaged Davtyan's plastered leg in the course of interrogation.