"Dashnaktsutyun" members admit en masse of beating Kocharyan's opponent

Supporters of the ARF "Dashnaktsutyun" have appeared at the police station in Yerevan and other cities of Armenia and pled guilty of beating up Vardan Arutyunyan, an activist. They stated that they had punished the activist for insulting the supporters of Robert Kocharyan, the second president of Armenia.

On June 3, Vardan Arutyunyan, a civil activist and a member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) stated that he had been attacked. He accompanied the post placed in his personal Facebook page with his photo with a black eye. He claims that he was attacked by Robert Kocharyan's supporters.

After the above Arutyunyan's post, Gegam Manukyan, the director of information and socio-political programmes of the "Yerkir Media" TV Company, a member of the "Dashnaktsutyun" Party, said that he had beaten up Vardan Arutyunyan. He explained this act by the fact that Vardan Arutyunyan, according to Manukyan's version, had spoken obscenely about Pargev Martirosyan, the head of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and Kocharyan's supporters in Nagorno-Karabakh, and had been also involved in attacking Grant Markaryan, a member of the ARF "Dashnaktsutyun". Mr Manukyan has added that he was voluntarily going to a police station.

Not only Gegam Manukyan, but also other members of the ARF "Dashnaktsutyun" came to the police station. They all took responsibility for beating up Arutyunyan.

The police have ignored all these confessions, since they had already established the suspect and detained him, Ashot Agaronyan, the head of the police PR department, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, adding that the detainee is Yura Ovannisyan, an ARF member.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on June 6, 2019 at 10:31 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.