BLURRED STATEMENTS OF THE OFFICIALS POURED OIL ON THE FLAMES: EX-PRESIDENT ON GYMURI MURDER

15:02, 23 Jan 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

“The Gyumri crime which shook whole Armenia is striking in its
brutality,” ex-President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan said in an
interview with 2rd.am.

“It was obvious that the people’s indignation could grow into
large-scale protests with unpredictable outcomes. The authorities
should have taken forestalling measures to prevent them. And first
of all, they should have unequivocally assured the investigation of
the crime by the Armenian law enforcement agencies and trial of the
perpetrator by the Armenian court (we already had a precedent of such
a decision in 1999),” Robert Kocharyan said.

“I am convinced that both the Armenian and Russian sides needed it as
it would rule out any attempt to zoom a concrete tragic case to the
scale of Armenia-Russia relations in general. Blurred, contradictory
and confused statements of our officials only poured oil on the flames,
adding a flavor of national humiliation to the escalated situation. And
this is already a highly explosive combination and unfortunately,
people’s anger was poured on the Armenian policemen.

In any event, it was a horrifying tragedy. My family and I are deeply
shocked by what happened and are mourning together with everyone”,
stated Robert Kocharyan.