ARMENIA DETAINS OPPOSITION FIGURES AFTER CLASHES
Reuters
March 11 2008
UK
YEREVAN, March 11 (Reuters) – Armenia’s National Security Service
said on Tuesday it had detained two leading opposition figures, part
of a clampdown on those suspected of staging protests that left eight
people dead.
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan imposed emergency rule this month
after the eight were killed in clashes between police and demonstrators
protesting his ally’s victory in a presidential poll.
It was the worst civil violence in Armenia since the 1991 fall of
the Soviet Union.
Opposition challenger Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who is a former president,
refused to recognise defeat in the Feb. 19 election and blamed police
brutality for the violence.
Alexander Arzumanyan, his campaign chief, as well as Ararat
Zurabyan, a leader of the Armenian National Movement, which supported
Ter-Petrosyan, were detained, a spokeswoman for the National Security
Service said.
The police also said arrest warrants for two members of parliament
and an opposition newspaper editor had been issued. Two deputies were
arrested last week after their immunity was revoked by parliament.
The Prosecutor-General said at least 53 people had been arrested as
part of an investigation into the protests, which it calls riots and
says were aimed at a forceful takeover of power in the Caucasus state.
"The responsibility for the events lies on the shoulders of those
people who in the course of nine days provoked the people into mass
disorder," president-elect Serzh Sarksyan, who is currently prime
minister, told reporters.
Armenia’s Constitutional Court rejected on Saturday the opposition’s
assertion that Kocharyan rigged the Feb. 19 election in favour of
Sarksyan, who officially won with 53 percent of the vote against 21.5
percent for Ter-Petrosyan.
Western powers have urged Armenia to lift the emergency laws and
on Monday Kocharyan did lift minor provisions of the laws, a move
welcomed by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly.
"I now call upon the authorities to lift the remaining provisions …
especially those that limit the freedom of the media," John Prescott,
who led the assembly’s observer mission to Armenia, said in a
statement.
He called for all sides to recognise the Constitutional Court’s
ruling on the election. (Reporting by Hasmik Lazarian, writing by
Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Elizabeth Piper)