Georgian Admits Tossing Grenade Near Bush, but Provides No Motive
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: July 22, 2005
New York Times
July 22 2005
MOSCOW, July 21 – The man arrested Wednesday night in Georgia after
a shootout with the police admitted on Thursday to throwing a hand
grenade near a stage where President Bush was addressing a huge public
rally in May, two senior Georgian officials said.
The grenade did not explode, but sullied a presidential visit to
Georgia, a small post-Soviet nation on the Black Sea, during which
Mr. Bush embraced the country’s tilt toward the West and gave a speech
about the advance of freedom and democracy.
The suspect, Vladimir Arutyunian, 27, told doctors who are treating him
for gunshot wounds that he had hurled the grenade, Interior Minister
Vano Merabishvili and Gela Bezhuashvili, the chairman of Georgia’s
National Security Council, both said in telephone interviews.
Mr. Arutyunian’s motive was not immediately clear, but the initial
impression of investigators was that he bore some unspecified
animus toward the United States and that he had acted alone, Mr.
Merabishvili said.
The two officials said they expected the investigation to gain
more clarity once officers were able to interview the suspect. Mr.
Arutyunian was under guard on Thursday in a hospital in Tbilisi. His
injuries were not regarded as life-threatening.
A search of his apartment had turned up more grenades, Russian
military manuals and, according to Guram Donadze, the Interior
Ministry spokesman, a Russian-language copy of “The Day of the Jackal,”
a novel about a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.
Mr. Arutyunian, an unemployed Georgian citizen of Armenian descent, was
arrested at the apartment he shared with his mother on the outskirts
of Tbilisi on Wednesday night after a shootout in which he was injured
and one Georgian officer was killed.
Mr. Merabishvili said Mr. Arutyunian was a member of a separatist
party that supported the deposed leadership of Ajaria, a region
formerly out of Georgia’s federal control that rejoined the nation
last year under pressure from President Mikheil Saakashvili.
But he said it was not clear what influence, if any, separatist
politics may have had in the incident. It was also not immediately
clear where the suspect obtained the grenades and the assault rifle
he fired at the police.
The arrest capped an intense week for Georgian security officials, who
released photographs of the suspect on Monday and offered a reward of
more than $80,000 for information on his whereabouts. The photographs
showed a clean-shaven young man in a black jacket and dark glasses.
Mr. Bezhuashvili said the photos had been discovered after a joint
investigation by the Georgian authorities and the United States, in
which officers reviewed every obtainable photograph or video taken
in the crowd, as well as satellite imagery.
Once the pictures were released, Mr. Bezhuashvili said, the tips
leading to Mr. Arutyunian began pouring in, and he was promptly
arrested. He had recently grown a beard.
The American Embassy in Tbilisi released a statement calling the
joint effort “a model for international law enforcement cooperation.”