ARMENIA OPPOSITION YOUTHS DEMAND RELEASE OF ALL COUNTRY’S POLITICAL PRISONERS

Interfax News Agency
April 30 2008
Russia

Activists of the Now youth movement, which backs former Armenian
President Levon Ter-Petrosian, have staged a protest rally in Yerevan
demanding to release of Armenian political prisoners.

Several dozens of activists put on overalls, with only one letter
engraved on each overall, but which altogether make up the phrase:
"Freedom to Political Prisoners."

The protesters marched in downtown Yerevan. They stopped near the
Armenian government offices, the parliament, the presidential
residence, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the monument to
revolutionary Alexander Myasnikian – Vladimir Lenin’s comrade and
the first chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in Soviet
Armenia – and the embassies of France and Italy.

The youths then marched along Severny Prospekt and attempted to enter
Liberty Square, but police officers did not allow them to do this.

According to earlier reports, refusing to accept the official results
of the February 19 presidential elections, Ter-Petrosian and his
followers organized protests in Yerevan on March 1, which later grew
into clashes with police, in which 10 people were killed and more
than 200 injured. Ter-Petrosian’s supporters still do not recognize
the election results.

The National Movement Center headed by the former Armenian president is
preparing a lawsuit at the European court of Human Rights (ECHR). They
are going to appeal violations during and the falsified results of
the February election. A working group, in which foreign lawyers are
involved, was established to prepare the lawsuit.