On Saturday, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia issued an announcement, according to which the murder case of the former Malatia-Sebastia community leader’s son, Sedrak Zatikyan, and an accidental victim, Karine Sargsyan, was revealed.
According to the information of the Prosecutor’s Office, the suspect is Arsen Arushanyan, born in 1993, who had been arrested in the past and was being prosecuted for theft. And as the Prosecutor’s Office informs us, the mentioned case was revealed during the investigation of the theft case. It was proved that Arushanyan murdered Sedrak Zatikyan. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Arushanyan was only the hired killer, who was hired by some people to commit the assassination. The investigation is still continuing, and new evidence is being searched for. Let’s remind that Sedrak Zatikyan, 26, was murdered last year, on June 22, 2006, on the crossroads of Sebastia-Tichina streets. Zatikyan was shot dead in his “Mercedes Brabus” SUV (plate numbers 10SS045). During this murder, Karine Sargsyan was also accidentally shot dead. Sargsyan was the mother of three teen-age children. Right on the next day after the murder a few implications were being circulated, the main one of which related to the fact that Zatikyan’s murder could be connected to an April 1, 2004 incident. At that time the Zatikyan brothers, Sedrak and Andranik, beat and then shot the son of NA Deputy Hakob Hakobyan, named Vardan Hakobyan, and the latter’s friend, Narek Khachatryan. According to this version, the relations of the Zatikyans and Hakobyans became very tense after the 2003 elections. However, Hakobyan denied this version, saying that their relations with the Zatikyans have been in order for a long time, and that his son was becoming friends with Zatikyan’s sons. Let’s also mention that after Sedrak’s murder the Prosecutor’s Office arrested the cousin of Hakob Hakobyan, Stepan Hakobyan, accusing him of carrying an unlicensed gun, but a few days later he was freed from the charge.
As of the incident of April 1, 2004, a case was made against the Zatikyan brothers, accusing them of an act of hooliganism. However, the case was sponged because of a lack of evidence, even though there were a number of witnesses. Back in 2004, there was an opinion that the Police has originally conducted the investigation in a way to sponge the case. And after the murder of Sedrak Zatikyan, many people think that Zatikyan and the innocent mother of three, Karine Sargsyan, wouldn’t be dead if Sedrak had been punished for his deeds and was in jail.
Although the revelation of Zatikyan’s case was among the “mysterious cases”, which had until now not been revealed, there is still an opinion that the responsibility of this case was just put on Arushanyan. It means that the actual hirers of the murder continue to be free. As of the “noisy murders”, Zatikyan’s murder is not the only one. On April 24, 2006 Arkady Ter-Tadevosyan’s son and his friend murdered Erik Sargsyan, born in 1980; on August 8 Alexander Givoyev was murdered on the Ashtarak-Gyumri road. Moreover, during Givoev’s murder, another innocent woman was shot dead. On September 6 Shahen Hovasapyan, former head of the operative investigation department of the State Tax Service, was murdered as the result of the explosion of his car. Furthermore, the number of such murders in Armenia increases several times more than the facts of revelation, even the most “unbelievable revelations.”
P.S. Yesterday, the Prosecutor General of Armenia, Aghvan Hovsepyan, also referred to this murder. “The investigation of this case is the result of the painstaking work of the investigator of the case. Numerous assumptions were verified. Finally the assumption, by which the murder was perpetuated because of unfriendly relations, was confirmed,” said Hovsepyan, without mentioning an example of a murder committed because of friendly relations.