Yesterday at 12:55 not far from the Erebuni district police department of Yerevan 12 people attacked the two cars belonging to the head of “New Times” party, Aram Karapetyan. These people were armed with guns and rifles, only four of which didn’t have masks. The other eight people had covered their faces.
This was what head of “New Times” (NT) party, Aram Karapetyan, said during a press conference yesterday. According to him these twelve people attacked them by screaming and threatening, made his body guards lye on the ground, as well as injured his driver. Later these twelve left Mr. Karapetyan on the street and drove off with the two cars of Mr. Karapetyan along with his body guards and driver (five people). According to A. Karapetyan four people with covered faces took the whole thing on cameras. According to the preliminary information of the NT these people were representatives of the RA National Security Service (NSS). We were informed from the NSS that the reason for the abovementioned actions was their information claiming that the people that were arrested had pistols with them. As a result of this operation the NSS found three gas pistols on those five people. “They didn’t do anything to me. I was talking to the central office representatives of our party at the moment. I asked one of those people with covered faces who they were and he told me to shut up. Later when I asked him whether they would shoot if I didn’t shut up one of them told me to get out of the car. They took my cars and the guys away and I had to take a taxi”, said Aram Karapetyan. We wonder why those people didn’t do anything with Aram Karapetyan because he had a gas pistol with him too. Yesterday Mr. Karapetyan showed a license signed by the RA police deputy head Mr. Varyan allowing him to have a gas pistol with him and assured that all his body guards had registered their pistols and everything was legal with them. Mr. Karapetyan assures that this action was ordered by the NSS head Gorik Hakobyan, whose purpose was to threaten them. According to Mr. Karapetyan the RA NSS wanted to remind them who the ruler of this country was. “They showed us that we were right to organize a rally on the 28th and lead people to the NSS building and protest Gorik Hakobyan to resign because no authority figure has a right to intimidate in political processes inside the country if there are no cases of terror and crime”, said Aram Karapetyan. According to him this was a political intimidation. “This was a foolish idea: I mean what Gorik Hakobyan did”, said Mr. Karapetyan and added that the reason was his press conference and his open letter to be published. We wonder what this open letter actually says that it led up to this. A. Karapetyan says that this open letter will contain 12-20 questions concerning the activities of the NSS and NT. According to him there are questions in the mentioned letter asking whether the NSS has spent money to bring up their agent to divide the party from inside, whether Gorik Hakobyan has ordered to check up Aram Karapetyan’s accounts at “Unibank to check out how much money he had received, whether the NSS has undertaken any steps to get information concerning the private life of Aram Karapetyan with the purpose of giving it to Tigran Ulikhanyan later on to harm his reputation, etc. “This is all true. If we say something wrong, if someone says that our questions are stupid, we will just publish the answers to those questions”, said Aram Karapetyan. We asked Tigran Ulikhanyan about any information given to him that might harm the reputation of Karapetyan, but he refused to tell us anything about it. However, A. Karapetyan also said that the day before the press wrote about what Andranik Margaryan and Arthur Baghdasaryan have and their other properties they wrote a critical letter to A. Margaryan, A. Baghdasaryan and the RA general prosecutor, Aghvan Hovsepyan. “I think the letter served as a firm basis for the high ranking official to pay us back”, supposes Aram Karapetyan. We were informed from the NT office that these five people that were arrested had been released, but they had physical injuries that they got when arrested. We were also informed from the NT that these five people didn’t counterattack when being arrested. “The windows of one of my cars are broken. They apologized later. They have only kept the pistols with them claiming that even though everything was legal, they would keep them for some time to check out something and then would return them on Tuesday”, we were informed from the NT central office yesterday.