Yesterday the NA ad hoc Commission looking into the March 1 occurrences was discussing the episodes of the 25-minute video prepared by a committee established by the opposition.
The session hosted the head of the National Centre for Forensic Medical Examination, Shota Vardanyan, senior investigator of the March 1 events Vahagn Harutyunyan and three of the young people, who were showed in the video near the French Embassy – Tigran Karakhanyan, Garik Hovakimyan and Roman Grigoryan. First the members of the ad hoc commission questioned Vahagn Harutyunyan. They discussed the part of the video where in the background of the three squatted guys were seen spots of blood. Moreover, the video was showed in two episodes and in the second one the spots were not seen any more. Those spots don’t exist now either. Harutyunyan denied the existence of spots on the walls. “The employees of the embassy were also questioned, who witnessed that the embassy walls have not been washed since then and there are no spots seen anywhere. Expertise was conducted to find out the origin of the spots. The wall is made of basalt and in order to wipe out any blood spot from it will be necessary to use some glass-paper. So nothing like that was used to clean the walls.” And the session of the commission yesterday resembled some tragic-comedy genre movie, especially the part, when the three young men were being discussed. And although the chair of the commission Samvel Nikoyan asked the young men not to be scared and tell them the truth about the events of March 1 all three of them repeated the same thing and it was obvious that they are not telling the truth. All this performance was organized to show to the public that there were no blood spots on the walls. And the young men were brought over to make their statements more substantiated. The guys repeated that there was no blood on the wall, no one beat them and no one was beaten or shot in their presence on March 1. Hovakimyan and Grigoryan told that they are neighbors; both of them taxi drivers and live in Sari Tagh. On March 1 night they were outside in their neighborhood drinking beer and playing backgammon and when their cigarette finished they decided to go out somewhere to find an open goods stall. “We were stopped by three young men. We told them that we are headed to Butania and they asked us to take them with us. They were unfamiliar to us. We drove like 50 meters and decided to stop the car. They stopped my car and brought near the French embassy wall as a suspect of burglary. They kept us for 20-25 minutes till the central police department officers arrived to take us to the department,” tells Roman Grigoryan. He also said that he had seen several bright color bottles on the walls and that the spots were originated because of the liquid in the bottles. “A soldier was drinking coke and then took the bottle out of his mouth and splashed on us,” added Roman. In his words the spots on the wall originated because of the bright color liquid from the bottles. The next young man Tigran Karakhanyan told that he is an apprentice of a special school from Sovetashen. On that night he heard that stores were being robbed on the Mashtots Avenue and decided to go downtown to have a piece of that. He took a shoe from the pavement. Tigran says that they have done nothing to be beaten for. “Didn’t they even slap you once?” asked Nikoyan. “No,” said the young man. Tigran is one of the young men, who stopped the car of Garik and Roman and asked for a lift. They told that two more people were brought to them near the French embassy and they were all taken to the police department. Moreover, the interrogated guys were saying that it was seven of them but investigator Harutyunyan specially mentioned that they were six. So it was never found out who was right and who was wrong. Another thing is also hard to believe in. How could two people drink beer and play backgammon outside when it was blistering cold on March 1 night. “Yes, what wrong with that? When I feel thirsty I drink beer. They are people, who don’t eat at home; they eat outside,” said Hovakimyan. Reminder: the parents of Souren Hovhannisyan, who was killed on March 1, claimed that their son was killed near that wall. They saw on TV that their son was there but the next episode showed their son lying motionless on the ground. “That episode was showed to the parents of Hovhannisyan. I understand the parents. It’s hard for them. I told them that their son wasn’t there at that time. All the facts of Hovhannisyan’s death were showed to his parents,” said V. Harutyunyan. It’s not excluded that the seventh guy was S. Harutyunyan. The next investigated issue related to the part in the video, where different parts of dead people were shown in the dried blood. Shota Vardanyan stated that those were not human fragments. “The jaw is a pig jaw, judging by the shape of the teeth, the tongue could have belonged to a sheep or a calf. He also said that the results of the examination will be presented to the office of prosecutor general and the parliament,” said Vardanyan. These scenes were filmed by the A1plus cameraman. In the video we can hear words, such as, “Keep filming, they are putting water to clean the spots.” In the scene the water machine splashes water on the street to wash out the blood. The ad hoc commission also discussed the scene, where the police truck goes over a protestor. Harutyunyan announced that at that moment the truck driver wasn’t a policeman. He said that one of the protestors stole the car and after hitting that person he ran away. The policeman, the driver of the truck, has alibi that that the protesters kidnapped the truck and made him get out of the truck. “The person, who was hit by the car is Gevorg Tevanyan, Ararat marz, Marmashen village, 1981. He was taken to hospital at 23:45. The accident happened 30 minutes or an hour before that time. Both Tevanyan and other witnesses mentioned that the truck was driven by a civilian and not a policeman. Afterwards the culprit ran from the vehicle,” says V. Harutyunyan. It’s noteworthy that right after the accident the Special Investigative Service became informed about that. However, the prosecutor’s office was denying this information for a long time. “I just want to know if it’s possible that the UAZ truck runs over a person and he stays alive,” said Nikoyan. “I can bring other examples too. It’s possible for a person to stay alive even if he jumps from the 9th floor of a building or jump out from a plane of 7 kilometer altitude. The bullet may smash the head but the person may stay alive. There are no standards in the medical science,” said Shota Vardanyan. V. Harutyunyan added that so far they hadn’t found the culprit.