Leading Armenian Political Family Accused of Murder

Armen Sarkisian, the younger brother of opposition leader Aram Sarkisian, was arrested on 15 March, becoming the ninth person to be charged with the killing of Tigran Naghdalian on 28 December.

Naghdalian's murder prompted speculation in the media and among opposition groups that he had been killed because he had reportedly been about to air video footage of the massacre of nine people in the parliament building in October 1999. According to the allegations, Armenian public TV had doctored the tape provided to police.

Though for different reasons, investigators also assert that Naghdalian's death was connected to the massacre, in which Armen Sarkisian's brother, Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian, was killed. While the opposition believe that Naghdalian, a supporter of President Robert Kocharian, would have shown unedited video footage that could raise awkward questions about the official investigation into the 1999 shootings, the prosecutor suggested that Sarkisian believed that Naghdalian himself had been directly involved in the killing and had ordered his murder in revenge.

In January 2003, Oleg Yunoshev, the Russian lawyer representing Sarkisian's family in the 1999 case, claimed that Naghdalian had been "involved" in the parliament killings and repeated the allegation that the tape had been doctored.

Police statements so far suggest that the case against Sarkisian will rest heavily on the testimony of Hovhannes Harutyunian, one of his distant relatives. Harutyunian reportedly told police that Sarkisian had paid him $50,000 to arrange the killing.

Hector Sardarian, the prosecutor heading the investigation, told RFE/RL that there was also other evidence linking Sarkisian to the crime. Sarkisian's attorney, however, has said investigators have no evidence implicating Sarkisian in the shooting.

President Kocharian himself has commented on the case, saying that the evidence was "so compelling that the prosecutor-general's office simply had no other choice" but to arrest Sarkisian.

However, independent commentators and opposition figures have questioned the quality of the evidence, Sarkisian's alleged motive, and the reason and the timing of the authorities' move.

Mark Grigorian, deputy director of the Caucasus Media Institute (CMI), argues that "Sarkisian's family would have been the last people to be interested in killing a very important, if not the most important, witness for them in the case about 27 October." He contends that the earlier arrest of some Sarkisian relatives in connection with the case were a "warning message to Sarkisian's family." The trial of five men arrested for the killings in parliament is ongoing. Several months before Naghdalian's shooting, Grigorian, one of Armenia's leading independent journalists, was himself injured in a grenade attack.

Stepan Demirchian, a leading opponent of Kocharian and the son of another victim of the 1999 shootings, shares similar doubts about Sarkisian's alleged motive. According to Ruzan Khachatrian, the spokeswoman for Demirchian's People's Party of Armenia (HZhK), the party considers "Armen Sarkisian's arrest to be a political act and a fabricated case" and argues that "it was necessary for Sarkisian's family and for the other families of those assassinated in the 1999 attack that Tigran Naghdalian should be alive and well so that he could testify in court."

The opposition's claims of a political motive to the arrest were sharpened in a joint statement issued on 16 March by nine opposition factions. In the statement, they asserted that "by arresting Armen Sarkisian, the authorities are offering guarantees to the perpetrators of the 27 October terrorist act." Sarkisian's brother Aram said on 18 March that Kocharian "did not arrest my brother; he took him hostage."

In questioning the impartiality of the investigations, the opposition has also picked up on Kocharian's acknowledgement that he had asked the prosecutor to delay the arrest of Sarkisian. The prosecutor had originally informed the president on the eve of the 5 March presidential runoff elections that he planned to arrest Sarkisian. Kocharian defended his decision, saying that he had wanted to avert "additional tensions" in a campaign in which passions were already running high. The arrest of the first suspects was announced just hours after the balloting.

Khachatrian contends that Kocharian's intervention amounted to a breach of the independence of the police and judiciary. She also pointed out that the president had rejected earlier calls for law enforcement agencies to pursue investigations of the 1999 massacre more actively, arguing that he had no right to make such demands on independent bodies.

PUBLIC RESPONSE AND ELECTIONS

Sarkisian's arrest brought his mother and female relatives of other officials killed in the 1999 shootings out onto the streets to demonstrate outside Kocharian's official residence on 17 March. Greta Sarkisian then began a sitdown protest outside the building. Her protest continues.

The families' protests were followed on 18 March by a demonstration by 12,000 to 15,000 people in Yerevan. However, they were stopped by baton-wielding police and Interior Ministry troops before they could reach the president's residence.

There is little sign so far that Sarkisian's arrest will become more than simply one more issue in a growing list of opposition grievances that have led to four weeks of mass demonstrations. The protest rallies began immediately after the first round of presidential elections on 19 February, which were described as being marred by "serious irregularities" by Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers. In mid-March, Kocharian himself acknowledged "numerous irregularities" in the voting and counting process but insisted that these could not have had a serious impact on the outcome of the vote.

This has not been enough to stop the protests, which usually attract 10,000 to 15,000 demonstrators.

Throughout the month, protestors have been arrested and given short periods of "administrative punishment" in prison. The wave of arrests continued last week, with the justice minister telling RFE/RL that 40 people had been "subjected to administrative punishment." RFE/RL also reported arrests outside the capital, Yerevan.

Meanwhile, the opposition has begun to consolidate ahead of parliamentary elections in May, with the nine parties that issued a statement condemning Sarkisian's arrest creating an alliance. The Artarutyun (Justice) alliance includes Demirchian's HZhK and Aram Sarkisian's Republic Party.

In all, five blocs made up of 18 parties have so far said that they will contest the elections. The president's Republican Party currently heads a bloc with a majority of seats in parliament. The president is expected to strengthen his control of the legislature. CMI's Grigorian believes that Kocharian would be "satisfied with at least 80 percent" of parliament being in his favor.

Grigorian added that he saw no possibility of the opposition uniting, arguing that these are "different groups with different ambitions, different interests, and problems with each other." Indeed, Grigorian expects the rifts within the opposition to deepen as the election approaches.

In addition to Demirchian's Artarutyun alliance, the main challengers to the dominance of Kocharian supporters are Artashes Geghmian, who came in third in the presidential elections with 17 percent of the vote, and a bloc formed by Raffi Hovhannisian, Armenia's first post-Soviet foreign minister. The bloc is named after Hovhannisian, but he himself is not on the list of candidates. Hovhannisian was banned from running for the presidency on the grounds that he did not meet citizenship and residency criteria.