THROWING THE BLAME FOR THE 10 MURDERS ON POLITICAL PRISONERS?
A1+
[07:29 pm] 07 October, 2008
Pan-Armenian movement representative Levon Zurabyan weighs up the
Yerevan city council’s denial to hold a meeting on Northern Avenue
as exclusive and award-winning. On September 29, "Republic" party
political council president Aram Sargsyan’s authorized representative
Artak Zeynalyan sent a notice to the Yerevan city council to hold a
mass public meeting on October 17, however, according to the notice,
the meeting is going to kick off at Northern Avenue and end with
a march.
"This time the authorities made an award-winning allegation based
on the violation of the right of proprietors; however, the law on
meetings, marches and demonstrations does not state anything about
that. In other words, this formulation is very weak from the juridical
point of view," said Levon Zurabyan. He also told A1+ that the denial
of the Yerevan city council is being protested in the Administrative
Court and the hearing will take place today.
Despite the outcome, Levon Zurabyan promised members of the Armenian
National Congress that the meeting will take place on October 17 on
Northern Avenue as promised.
Zurabyan also touched upon the October 2 statement made by the PACE
monitoring commission. According to him, it was a late, yet important
evaluation by the Council of Europe which states that imprisonment
of people for political views is unacceptable.
The PACE monitoring commission members don’t refer to the prisoners as
political prisoners, but that doesn’t worry Levon Zurabyan. According
to him, there are currently 75 political prisoners in Armenia who are
members of the opposition and the authorities are not only keeping
them hostage, but are also trying to use them to solve their issues.
Perhaps they are not giving answers because everything is clear. In
response to that, Levon Zurabyan said that the authorities are
busy trying to hide the facts. They have sent seven cases of state
appropriation to court and have attached the accusations of those
seven to the descriptions of the ten murders. Thus, the authorities
are trying to throw the blame for the ten murders on the seven
political prisoners.
Zurabyan added that he was not making it up because authority
officials had said that they couldn’t blame the murders on anyone
if they released all political prisoners. So, they are keeping the
prisoners hostage in order to forget about the crime.