On November 8, the Chief Prosecutor’s office workers summarized the murders and assassination attempts in the first half of 2005 and 2006 and the studies of crimes with the use of weapons. The prosecutors’ studies show that men mostly commit murder and murder attempts, mainly with sharp-cutting objects; there are a lot of cases when they commit the murder under the influence of alcohol. Nine of the 55 murders committed in 2005 and 7 of the 24 murderers have been drunk. Based on statistics, there are also a lot of family members that have committed murders or have attempted to murder. There have been 39 murders during the first six months of 2006, of which 12 were committed by relatives. For example, a resident of the Gegharkunik region who had gone abroad to work comes to Armenia, sees his wife with another man and kills her. A young man was once again rejected by the girl that he liked, so he shot one of the girl’s relatives and then himself in front of the rest of the relatives. “Girls, consider that,” said the Chief Prosecutor of Armenia Aghvan Hovsepyan jokingly. During the years 1999-2006, the rates for crimes in Armenia based on a scale of 100,000 people went down from 5.2% to 3.9%. At this level, we’re equal to Azerbaijan-3.6%, Uzbekistan-3.5%, Bulgaria-3.9%. We’re ahead of Russia-6.7%, Ukraine-6.7, Kazakhstan-11.7% and Finland-8.9%. The public prosecutors of Armenia are pleased to see the cooperation with other countries and continue to sign dual contracts. However, sometimes strange things happen. For example, in 1998, an Armenian citizen committed murder in Armenia and only 8 days later became a citizen of Russia, but now the prosecutors can’t bring him back to Armenia because Russia doesn’t allow it. Armenia trust Turkey more in this case. Two Turkish citizens were arrested for murdering Armenian citizens in Turkey and currently the prosecutors are translating the case of the murder to send it to Turkey.
