ARMENIA RIOTS "ORGANIZED ACTION" – DETECTIVE

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS
March 12 2008
Russia

Ninety people have been arrested in connection with mass riots in
Yerevan that followed February’s presidential election and, according
to the findings of a "preliminary investigation," were "a planned
and organized action," a senior Armenian detective said on Wednesday.

Supporters of former president Levon Ter-Petrosian were holding rallies
in the heart of Yerevan from February 20 to March 1, demanding the
annulment of the official results of the February 19 election,
according to which Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan won the poll,
beating Ter-Petrosian and another candidate.

On March 1, protests grew into clashes between protesters and police
in which eight people were killed and more than 170 injured.

That day incumbent President Robert Kocharian ordered a 20-day state
of emergency in Yerevan.

"It has been found out in the course of a preliminary investigation
that the mass riots were a planned and organized action that was
coordinated from a single center and was designed to destabilize the
situation in the country and in Yerevan," Vaagn Arutiunian, senior
investigator for serious cases at the Special Criminal Investigation
Service, told reporters in Yerevan on Wednesday.

Akop Karakhanian, head of the prosecution service team overseeing
the investigation into the riots confirmed that the violence had been
preplanned and centrally controlled.

Karakhanian also said the opposition had taken psychotropic drugs and
that psychological pressure, which included use of neurolinguistic
programming, had been put on rioters.

"’Color revolution’ technologies were used in the course of the
riots. They had been brought into line with national mentality,"
Karakhanian said.

Karakhanian declined to answer a question whether any forces outside
Armenia had been behind the riots. He pleaded the interests of the
investigation and national interests.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress