RESTRAINT TO DEPUTIES ARRESTED ON MARCH 1 CASE AND TO MANY OTHER PERSONS CAN BE CHANGED VERY EASILY, ARFD DEPUTY CONSIDERS

NOYAN TAPAN

JU LY 29

The prevailing part of the questions asked on July 28 at the Hayatsk
club to National Assembly ARFD faction member Artsvik Minasian, who
is also a member of the NA Ad Hoc Commission on Study of the March 1-2
Events in Yerevan and their Reasons regarded commission’s activity. He,
in particular, said that on July 25 a working group composed of
commission members (A. Minasian was also among them: NT) visited the
Vardashen penitentiary institution, and the meetings and talks with
Mushegh Saghatelian, Shant Haroutiunian, Suren Sirunian kept there,
were "very warm," against some opposition newspapers’ publications. The
meeting with Gagik Jhangirian, the former RA Deputy Prosecutor General,
did not take place, as the latter was at the court on that day.

A. Minasian also said that that morning he received alarming
information that Myasnik Malkhasian’s health condition has worsened,
and he will try to attend to that issue immediately after the press
conference ensuring "deputy’s being under medical control and being
moved to the respective institution if there is a need of hospital
treatment."

He stated that after the answers of Vahagn Haroutiunian, a senior
investigator on especially important cases of the RA Special
Investigation Service, the head of the investigation group on the
March 1-2 criminal case, invited to the commission lately personally
he does not see a necessity to keep arrest chosen as a restraint to
three NA deputies and "many other persons besides them" arrested on
the case. "I consider that the restraint can be changed very easily
and the same penitentiary actions can be done by leaving people in
freedom," A. Minasian said.

At journalists’ request touching upon the statement made by RPA
faction member Armen Ashotian lately that it would be more correct of
ARFD running for the presidential elections with its own candidate
became opposition after the elections, A. Minasian said: "I treat
not seriously the advice of my coalition colleague for several
reasons, first, he should not consistently try to get a status of
political Nostradamus, especially as an answer to it was voiced both
in the preelectoral and postelectoral periods of the presidential
elections." He said that Dashnaktsutiun has sufficient will to make
decisions on its own.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress