MARCH 1 REPORT SENT TO THE PACE

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16:25:04 – 19/10/2009

Interview with the leader of the Nor Zhamanakner party, the member
of the NA temporary commission to study March 1 Aram Karapetyan

After the report of the NA temporary commission, you stated that you
were going to present our own report. Have you already presented it
to international organizations?

I have already presented the first part of the report which is in
my opinion very objective. I have sent it via mail to the PACE and
they are going to translate it. Though they asked us to translate
the conclusion for not causing problems. We are now doing this job
and we are going to present it to the PACE within the next few days.

What do you expect after presenting this report?

The PACE has not only to express its opinion but also to make a
legal proposal, for example a proposal to set up a new body to study
those cases. I think the non-governmental commission headed by Suren
Abrahamyan will also present its report to the PACE.

Writing that report, we had the following question to discuss
objectively those cases to find out who ordered and who shot. From
the first part of my report, I can say that in the morning on March
1, under the name of investigative actions, the peace rally was
dispersed. This is proved by documents in addition, the event took
place not at 7 o’clock but earlier. It is noted in the report that
there was a clash between the ralliers and the police officials and
what happened in the evening was grounded by what happened in the
morning. I also wrote that the only person who could give the order
to shoot was Robert Kocharyan.

All the representatives of force bodies included in the commission
stated that they were repeatedly reporting about what was happening
to Hayk Harutunyan and the latter to Robert Kocharyan.

As to what happened, a situation was formed which cannot but explode.

They were demanding to call for responsibility those who dispersed
the peace protesters and to let Levon Ter-Petrosyan leave his house
and meet the protesters. I have also written in my report that even
if we assume that the rallies in the Freedom square were illegal
and if Levon Ter-Petrosyan was let participate in them for 10 days
running so what hindered them from letting him meet the protesters
for one hour near the statue of Miasnikyan. They realized that if
Levon Ter-Petrosyan came to the Miasnikyan square, he would have
led people to the Freedom square and the government would collapse
hours later. I would like to stress that all the fact included in
the report are taken from the documents of the fact-finding group
and the NA commission to study March 1.

The circumstances of death of the 10 victims and those responsible
have not been revealed yet. The NA temporary commission was not able
to do anything. Do you dwell on this topic in your report? Did you
register any progress?

There are two points in the report in this connection. Since this
question has not been clarified yet, we will dwell on it in the
second part of the report. Now we are working in this relation. But
proceeding from the documents we have, I can say that no one of the
protesters used any weapon, there is no proof that a certain person
shot in the direction of the soldiers or policemen. There were stones,
bludgeons etc. but not weapons. And those things, weapons found in
the freedom square have no fingerprints on them. So their owners are
not known. Here two conclusions can be made: either the protesters
cleaned and hided those weapons quickly during their clash with the
police, or those weapons did not belong to them. The second version
is more possible in my opinion.

The next unrevealed circumstance is that all the victims died at
about 20 o’clock. Earlier, more dangerous clashes took place but no
weapon was used. So we may conclude that the order to shoot people
was given at about 8 o’clock.

We may conclude from your words that the name of at least one of
those who gave orders is known: he is Robert Kocharyan.

We do not have all the legal documents and we are not an investigative
body. But we can conclude from the documents we have and from the
words of high ranking officials that it was Robert Kocharyan to rule
all that.

Interview By Arman Galoyan