WHEREABOUTS OF KARABAKH COMMITTEE CASE TRACED
ARMENPRESS
Nov 9, 2007
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 9, ARMENPRESS: Armenian law-enforcers said today
they have traced the whereabouts of a 50-volume 1988 criminal case
against members of the Karabakh Committee that was reported missing
from the archives of the prosecutor-general’s office earlier this week.
The disappearance came to surface after a search for the case could
not locate it. Prosecutor-general Aghvan Hovsepian was said to
order an immediate internal inquiry on October 31 to clarify all the
circumstances of the high-profile loss.
Speaking today to reporters, the prosecutor-general said his
subordinates found that the case had been handed to ex-president
Levon Ter-Petrosian back in 1996 at the instruction of then chief of
the investigative department of the procuracy.
He said the current chief of staff of the prosecutor-general’s
office, who is in charge of the archives, has sent a letter today to
ex-president asking him to return the case.
Aghvan Hovsepian said handing the case to ex-president was a gross
violation of the procedure ‘ because materials on any criminal can
not be handed to other bodies or individuals, even to the presidnet
of the country who can not ask for any such material or keep them."
"I think Levon Ter-Petrosian is a reasonable man and will return the
case to where it belongs," he said.
The case was launched in December 1988 against leaders of the
Karabakh Committee who spearheaded the movement for unification
of Nagorno-Karabakh, then part of Soviet Azerbaijan, with Soviet
Armenia. It was dropped and sent to archives a year later following
"changed circumstances."