APA, Azerbaijan
May 15 2009
Azeri police look into Armenian link in Baku university shooting
The Azerbaijani authorities have said the gunman who shot and killed
13 people, including himself, at the State Oil Academy in Baku on 30
April was linked to a Georgian citizen of Armenian origin.
In a joint statement carried by the APA and Turan news agencies on 15
May, the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor-General’s Office said
that the 29-year-old gunman, Farda Qadirov, had met Sergey Yegorovich
Grigoryan "on a regular basis" while in Georgia in October-November
2008.
Together with the 48-year-old Grigoryan, Qadirov, also a citizen of
Georgia, bought a Makarov pistol from a Tbilisi shop for 500 Georgian
lari (305 dollars), the statement read, adding that investigators were
looking into the possibility of Grigoryan’s involvement in the attack
on the Oil Academy.
Some Azerbaijani media had earlier speculated that the shooting might
have been masterminded by Armenia, which is in a state of war with
Azerbaijan over the latter’s breakaway Nagornyy Karabakh region.