Armenia: Blood and Bile

When a crime is committed in front of television cameras and dozens of eyewitnesses, and its perpetrators are arrested less than 24 hours later, few would expect it not to be solved. And few Armenians did so when five gunmen turned themselves in after seizing their parliament and spraying it with bullets exactly five years ago. It seemed that there was so much factual evidence that even the most incompetent law-enforcement official would quickly establish the truth about a shocking attack that killed eight senior officials, including Armenia's then-prime minister, Vazgen Sarkisian and the speaker of parliament, Karen Demirchian.

Yet precisely what happened inside and outside the parliament building in Yerevan on 27 October 1999 is still a mystery and may never be known. Increasingly, the case resembles the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John Kennedy, many circumstances of which remain unknown to this day. The most important unanswered question in both high-profile killings is who masterminded them. That mystery is particularly acute in Armenia, where President Robert Kocharian is still dogged by allegations that he was personally involved in the shootings despite the absence of compelling evidence against him.

MURDER AND THE PRESIDENT

The perceived high-level cover-up of the crime has been a key rallying point for Kocharian's most bitter political opponents. Incidentally, two of them are Sarkisian's brother Aram and Demirchian's son Stepan. These men lead Armenia's biggest opposition alliance, Artarutyun (Justice). The younger Demirchian was Kocharian's main challenger in last year's presidential election, which international monitors heavily criticized for widespread fraud. Artarutyun insists that he was the rightful winner of a vote that was officially won by the incumbent.

The relatives of the two assassinated leaders are convinced that ringleader Nairi Hunanian and his four henchmen were acting on somebody's orders when they burst into the National Assembly during its regular question-and-answer session with cabinet members. The gunmen, among them Hunanian's brother Karen and uncle Vram Galstian, had no trouble smuggling Kalashnikov rifles into the chamber, where they shot Prime Minister Sarkisian and speaker Demirchian and his two deputies from almost point-blank range. Four other parliamentarians and government ministers also died in a hail of automatic gunfire. Dozens of their colleagues were held hostage until the assailants surrendered to police the next morning.

Hunanian declared immediately after the bloodbath that he wanted to rid Armenia of a corrupt government that had for years been "sucking the people's blood." He specifically blamed Sarkisian, seen at the time as Armenia's most powerful man, for the country's post-Soviet economic woes, rigged elections, and abuse of power. All five gunmen were sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2003 after a nearly three-year trial.

Some of Hunanian's accusations were not unfounded. Indeed, Sarkisian, formerly a defense minister and one of the founders of the Armenian army, did play a pivotal role in presidential elections held in 1996 and 1998, both of which were reportedly falsified. It was a role that led many Armenians to loathe him. However, the public mood seems to have changed dramatically in early 1999 when Sarkisian decided to team up with Karen Demirchian, Armenia's hugely popular Soviet-era ruler.

The two men were murdered almost five months after a parliamentary election in which an alliance co-headed by them swept to a landslide victory. The May 1999 vote is still seen by many experts as the sole relatively clean Armenian election held since independence. The Sarkisian-Demirchian duo formed a new cabinet as a result and was gradually weakening the grip on power that Kocharian had enjoyed since becoming president in 1998.

That is why fingers were immediately pointed at Kocharian. Powerful government factions and army generals loyal to the former defense chief were close to forcing him into resignation later in 1999. Kocharian eventually prevailed in the bitter power struggle, reinforcing his reputation as a canny and shrewd politician. But his skills have so far failed to put an end to the nagging suspicion about his possible involvement in the shootings.

JUSTICE BLINDFOLDED?

"I accuse the authorities of doing nothing to prevent the 27 October crime from happening and doing everything to prevent it from being solved," Aram Sarkisian, the late premier's brother, has said. But both Stepan Demirchian and he are careful not to accuse Kocharian explicitly of masterminding the conspiracy. They instead point to the many apparent flaws in the more-than-yearlong criminal investigation into the parliament shootings and particularly to the authorities' handling of the ensuing trial of the gunmen.

Throughout the marathon trial Hunanian insisted that he had made the decision to storm the National Assembly without anybody's orders. But his concluding remarks in the court in November 2003 were more ambiguous. He stated bluntly that he "restored the constitutional order" by helping Kocharian become "the sole power center" in the country. "The president began exercising his authority in full only after that," he said.

The 38-year-old former student activist and journalist was not allowed to finish his speech three days later just as he was about to reveal "new circumstances" of the case. The presiding judge, Samvel Uzunian, interrupted him to end the proceedings, arguing that the question of who had engineered the massacre is the subject of a separate inquiry conducted by prosecutors.

Uzunian had already sparked controversy in August 2003 when he cut short the trial by not hearing testimony from more than a hundred witnesses. The judge accepted prosecutors' argument that 29 other witnesses cross-examined during the hearings had already provided sufficient information about the crime. The Sarkisian and Demirchian families portrayed that as another proof of a cover-up.

The trial was effectively suspended for six months in the first half of last year ostensibly due to health problems suffered by Uzunian and Galstian, who was also a defendant. The hiatus coincided with presidential elections in February and March 2003 and parliamentary elections in May. Relatives and supporters of the assassinated leaders say Kocharian and his allies wanted to avoid negative publicity associated with the politically sensitive case.

When the court hearings resumed in June 2003, Galstian, Hunanian's uncle, denied that he had been suffering from ill health (adding that prison guards had forcibly injected him with unidentified drugs). This April, he was found dead in his prison cell under still-murky circumstances. The authorities said he was suffering from a mental illness and committed suicide a few days after being placed in solitary confinement at his own request.

But according to Avetik Ishkhanian of the Armenian Helsinki Committee, a prison psychologist visited Galstian shortly before his death and found no signs of "agitation." Ishkhanian and two other human rights activists were allowed to see Galstian's body hanging from a bed sheet at Yerevan's maximum-security Nubarashen jail. "They did not let us see if there are any traces of violence, saying that an investigation is underway," he said afterward.

The official investigation into the 27 October case was also marred by a scandal over the alleged editing of the harrowing video of the shootings. The Russian attorney for the Sarkisian family, Oleg Yunoshev, has repeatedly charged that it was doctored by the state-run Armenian Public Television before being broadcast worldwide. Even Hunanian has backed the claim, which has been strongly denied by the authorities.

"I myself ordered [a state television] cameraman to shoot everything and never understood why just over eight minutes of the film was left from a shooting that lasted between 15 and 20 minutes," the ringleader of the killings told the court.

Yunoshev has linked the scandal to the murder, in December 2002, of the state television chief, Tigran Naghdalian, suggesting that the authorities eliminated a key witness to the alleged editing of the tape. But according to the official version of the crime, the first murder of a journalist in Armenia was commissioned by the late Sarkisian's second brother, Armen, because he felt that Naghdalian was also involved in the parliament attack.

Armen Sarkisian was sentenced to 15 years in prison early this year after pleading not guilty to the charges. His family denounced the imprisonment as politically motivated.

Five years later, the killings in parliament thus continue to shape Armenia's political life, raising the stakes for Kocharian in his bitter standoff with the two opposition leaders. Finding out the truth about the massacre is a key motivation for Stepan Demirchian and Aram Sarkisian in their fight for regime change.

Some, especially supporters of the Armenian president, see a penchant for revenge. Sarkisian, a firebrand speaker increasingly resembling his assassinated brother, does not deny that. "Yes, I do have a personal feud toward Robert Kocharian," he said. "Who wouldn't in my place?"