PUTRID SPOTS TAKEN FOR INJURIES
Anna Amiryan

Hayots Ashkhar Daily
03 Sep 2008
Armenia

Interview with the Director of the Center of Expertise of Health
Ministry Shota Vardanyan.

"Mr. Vardanyan your clarifications given during the last session
of the NA Temporary Committee Investigating March 1-2 developments
gave grounds to various contradicting commentaries by different Mass
Media. Particularly it was mentioned that the number of the injured
given by you don’t coincide with the data of the police."

"Before speaking about the data possessed by the police I would like
to touch upon the issue of the number of victims. We had 10 cases of
victims, from which 8 died on March 1-2 and 2 died in the hospital
40 days later.

That is to say 8 people died on March 1-2 and passed the post mortem
examination after two days and two of the victims – Tigran Abgaryan
and Samvel Harutyunyan suffered for more than a month.

Tigran Abgaryan -the second serviceman who became the victim of March
1-2 developments (Hamlet Tadevosyan was the next one), died on April
11 and 8.00 p.m. and next day passed the post mortem examination.

As for civilian Samvel Harutyunyan, he also died on April 11 and passed
post mortem examination on April 13. The photos clearly show that
they have been injured by blunt tools. He was taken to the hospital
on March 1, 10.10 p.m., in the state of unconsciousness. Which means
we didn’t see him immediately, he has been shifted to our center from
the 3rd clinics.

He suffered a very serious brain injury, which is clearly shown in the
photo. By the way we have submitted all the photos to the temporary
committee. But they have taken the putrid spots for injuries."

"According to the member of the committee A. Shahbazyan S.

Harutyunyan’s parents’ state that before death he has been beaten
severely."

"There have been no signs of being beaten. It is a post-death process.

When someone dies putrid spots appear. After the surgery our doctors
managed to keep him alive for a long period of time."

"There have been mutual accusations of using guns during March
1-2 developments, what can you say in this regard? Do the injuries
received by the policemen prove that the demonstrators have really
used guns? Is it possible to clarify by examination what type of guns
have been used?"

"During the previous months the 87 policemen were under stationary
medical care, and 111 policemen have been investigated, the total
number of the investigated policemen made up 198, from which only 21
have not been injured. You have got the exact day and time of their
medical investigation.

Some of them have been investigated when they were in the hospital,
the other came later.

We can also give20exact information about the citizens who passed
forensic investigation in our center. 14 of those citizens were under
investigation in ambulatory circumstances and 2 citizens were in normal
health state. Six citizens received serious gun injuries. As regards
the policemen who passed medical investigation – one of them received
serious gun injuries the other 25 were injured by a blast. Only 7
citizens received blast injuries of serious and average gravity."

"Let’s return to the type of the guns. Does the Scientific Medical
center of forensic examination have the possibility to identify the
type of the guns?"

"We have taken the photos of the bullets and handed them over to the
law enforcers. It is very difficult to say exactly what type of guns
has been used. And we are not competent. We can only say that we have
found a certain metallic bullet of this or that color and we give it
for investigation.

After all there are certain departments in the Ministry of Justice
that can identify the type of the guns."

"One clarification! Can you identify the injuries received by
"hedgehogs?"

"Of course no. It is not possible to exactly say that this or that
injury was received by "hedgehogs". But if there are speculations
in this regard you can bring certain specialists who can prove 100%
that some injuries were received by "he dgehogs." Though we have
certain cases that clearly show that."

To be continued
From: Baghdasarian