ARMENIAN TV AND RADIO COMMITTEE EX-HEAD ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED ATTEMPTS TO MANIPULATE POLLS
Interfax News Agency, Russia
June 10 2008
A member of the Karabakh Committee, ex-parliamentary deputy and former
head of the State Television and Radio Committee Samvel Gevorkian
was arrested in Yerevan on Tuesday.
Gevorkian was active in the Gegarkunik regional campaign staff of
former presidential candidate, Armenia’s ex-president Levon Ter-
Petrosian. Gevorkian was entered on a wanted list on March 10 on
suspicion of allegedly interfering with the work of the election
commission. A criminal case was opened against him, Sona Truzian,
a spokesperson for the Prosecutor General’s Office told Interfax.
The center of the opposition Pan-National Movement, led by Ter-
Petrosian, said meanwhile, that "the regime thus demonstrated that all
its assurances about the situation in the country are a lie [and that]
arrests were continuing for political reasons."
The center also said that Ter-Petrosian’s representative in the
presidential election Bagrat Andreasian had also been called to the
Prosecutor General’s Office, where criminal charges were brought
against him.
Earlier reports said that after the February 19 presidential election,
the Armenian opposition, led by ex-president Ter-Petrosian, organized
mass protest rallies which deteriorated into clashes with police
on March 1, in which ten people were killed and more than 250 were
wounded.
Forty-five people were in custody following the unrest as of June 3,
34 others were released on bail or with travel restrictions. In all,
61 criminal cases in relation to 67 citizens have been referred to
courts, the Prosecutor General’s Office spokesman said. The trials
of 26 suspects are over and ten of them have been given prison terms
of one to three and a half years.