Aram Karapetyan and Aram Z. Sargsyan made the following announcement during a press conference on May 11 with regards to the fact that the Police of Armenia consider Nikol Pashinyan as the organizer of the public meeting on May 9:
“We are all organizers-one organizer, plus another, plus another, and so on and so forth.”
According to Karapetyan, the operation organized by the authorities on May 9 near the National Security Service building was the following:
“That was a “round-up” operation which consisted of three parts. “Alpha” came too, but didn’t get mixed up. I myself saw how the director approached the police, talked and left. The goal was to break the backs of the people and then show it on “02” television. Our authorities have the logic of living in a zone. Whenever a strike takes place in a zone and there is a decision to destroy, the lights definitely go out.”
Aram Karapetyan, Aram Z. Sargsyan and Nikol Pashinyan announced on May 11 that there were provocateurs among them during the march on May 9.
“They were drunk and were yelling that the leaders had run off. One should have asked, ‘hey boy, I am standing next to you. How did I escape’?” mentioned Karapetyan.
Thanking the policemen who really followed rules and regulations on May 9, Karapetyan said:
“You should have seen the look on the faces of the police when Nikol Pashinyan was shouting out his challenges.”
Sargsyan added that there were many normal people among the policemen.
“I must say that the top-ranking police officers acted in a well-disciplined manner with the leaders, and only talked to them using their last names. That is the reality.”
“The so-called policemen don’t know anything about the field in which they work. We must all understand on what basis of the law the police officers and National Security Service officials worked on May 9 and what they wanted to say. The people who gave the command to the Police to carry out the corresponding activities committed a crime, and the name of that crime is abuse of official position,” said representative of the “Impeachment” alliance Nikol Pashinyan in response to the announcement of the police regarding the events of May 9. By making a reference to the 14th article of the Armenian legislation on “conduct of marches, demonstrations and public meetings”, Pashinyan noted:
“A representative of the police could have stopped the march only if it was illegal. He is obligated to inform the gathered, using a microphone, at least twice about the end of the event, and also fix the time. It was also the duty of the police to inform the event organizers that they had made arrangements for the activities being carried out. No policeman told us that we have pretensions for what was going on. We were marching and there were police squads with helmets and shields. What the police have done and continue doing is illegal.”
The police had accused rally participants of making provocative calls during the public meeting and Pashinyan considers that accusation provocative in itself.
“What is the matter? Demonstrations take place in all parts of the world and demonstrators conflict with the police. What is the matter?” mentioned Karapetyan.
The press conference speakers assured that all of the police officers know that the people were so angry that they were waiting to hear something, an order, on what to do.
“If we wanted to take action, all we needed to do was to say one word, one call, and everything would have ended. So, there is no point to infuriate the pro-government bodies, as everything is decided anyway. If they were, as they say, that brave, they should have behaved correspondingly. They don’t want to say that the people who were arrested on May 9 were released by the demand of the people,” said Pashinyan.
The speakers refrained from campaigning, following the rules of the Electoral Code. The organizers of the May 9 demonstration dispersed an announcement on May 11which said:
“By attacking peaceful demonstrators, the special squad officers of the police subdivision and the workers of the National Security Service stood in the way of the organizers’ actions to end the march and committed illegal, unlawful acts.”
The authors of the announcement say that violence, extinguishers and a poisonous gas that has an impact on the consciousness were used against the demonstrators.
“They applied the police vehicles on the people with the purpose of terror, and it was only by chance that there were no victims. They arrested parliamentary candidate David Matevosyan and nearly 10 people participating in the march. They injured many people, and some policemen were injured due to the conflict that arose. The police and National Security Service squadrons attacked journalists and impeded their professional work, tried to steal their cameras, sound recorders and photo cameras,” say the authors of the announcement.
During the press conference on May 11, Aram Karapetyan mentioned that according to their sources, on May 10, the Police of Armenia and the National Security Service had appealed to the Kentron and Nork-Marash districts’ first instance court to be granted the right to eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of Nikol Pashinyan.