EXPERT WHO CARRIED OUT TOXIC-CHEMICAL EXAMINATION TO BE INTERROGATED
AT COURT OF APPEALS FOR LAVRENTI KIRAKOSSIAN’S CASE

YEREVAN, July 26 (Noyan Tapan). Expert Svetlana Minassian, who has
submitted the conclusion of toxic-chemical examination, will be
interrogated at the Court of Appeals August 2 as witness to the case
on Lavrenti Kirakossian, Head of the National Democratic Union (NDU)
Baghramian structure. The Court of Appeals on Criminal and Military
Cases chaired over by Judge Sevak Hambardzumian made such a decision
July 26 thus satisfying the petition filed by the Counsel for
Defence. Vardan Zournachian, Lawyer of the defendant, stated the
expert did not answer two of the inspector’s three questions related
to the age of the used drugs and its quantity at the moment it was
discovered. The conclusion does not include either the reasons for not
answering the aforementioned questions, which, the lawyer believes,
creates doubt. Whereas those questions, Vardan Zournachian said, are
of principal importance, since if the date of the use would appear to
be within the ten-day term of administrative arrest, that would have
proven his client’s innnocence. Prosecutor Koryun Piloyan, in his
turn, stressed Kirakossian is accused of keeping drugs at home rather
than of using them. The expert’s proof, he put it, is not the “queen
of the proofs” at all, but just one of them. We would remind you that
the lower court of the Armavir region recognized Lavrenti Kirakossian
guilty of large-scale drug trafficking and sentenced him to 18 months’
imprisonment. Kirakossian and his lawyer refused to admit the charges
stating facts have been doctored for political purposes and the 59.3
grams of drugs which the search found out at his home appeared there
“with the help” of the policemen.