The chairman of the fact-finding group on the investigation of the March 1 events Vahe Stepanyan said that he was planning to quit working with the group. He informed about this during his interview to the Radio Liberty. He explained his decision with the situation created within the fact-finding group, which from time to time gets exacerbated. Vahe Stepanyan, said that he has failed to reconcile his wrangling pro-government and pro-opposition colleagues and will step down as a result. The five-member group was set up by President Serzh Sargsyan last October with the aim of collecting information that would shed more light on the causes of the March 1, 2008 clashes between opposition protesters and security forces. The group elected the latter as its chairman when it met for the first time in November. Stepanyan and the group’s two pro-government members caused a stir early this month they went on a two-week vacation, forcing a temporary suspension of the Western-backed inquiry. The group resumed its work on May 17 only to suspend it again two days later because of Stepanyan’s intention to resign. “The situation was becoming increasingly tense,” Stepanyan told. “I hoped that if we didn’t meet for a while, tensions would ease. But the opposite happened.” That tensions inside the investigative body are running high was confirmed by Robert Avagyan, one of its two pro-government members. “Vahe Stepanyan played the role of a balancer, but they put him into this situation,” Avagyan said, referring to his pro-opposition colleagues. One of them, Andranik Kocharyan, said Stepanyan should have acted faster. “If he didn’t want to work, then he should have either resigned as the group’s chairman or ended his membership in the group,” he said. The group’s activities reached deadlock after it submitted its first report to a special commission of the Armenian parliament also investigating the deadly clashes. The confidential report, leaked to the opposition press late last month, focused on circumstances of the death of Captain Hamlet Tadevosyan, one of the two police servicemen killed in pitched battles with opposition protesters who barricaded themselves in central Yerevan. Reminder: the activity of the fact-finding group was temporarily ceased (for 9 days). On May 18 the group should have returned to routine functioning; however as assured by Kocharyan the group has worked only one day efficiently. Tadevosyan was apparently the first casualty of the fierce clashes that also left eight civilians dead. According to the Armenian law-enforcement authorities, he was killed by an explosive device thrown by one of the protesters. They have presented that as proof of their claims that some of the opposition supporters had firearms and that the use of lethal force against them was therefore justified. In its leaked report, the Fact-Finding Group questioned these claims, saying that investigators failed to properly examine the officer’s body, clothes and flak jacket. It suggested that the grenade that killed him exploded by his waist, rather than feet, as is claimed by the investigators. Opposition representatives have construed this as an implicit assertion that Tadevosyan held the grenade in his hand and set it off inadvertently. Avagyan revealed that he and the group’s other pro-government member, Gevorg Tovmasyan, did not sign the report and disagree with its conclusions largely rejected by state prosecutors. “Whenever there is situation, which doesn’t imply legal solution it is time to change it,” said Stepanyan and continued, “we have two objectives here. The first one is to interpret the issued order and when necessary change the order.” “First of all the chairman of the group should determine his legal status, whether he is the leader of the group or not. Does the Ombudsman of Armenia bear any responsibility for his steps?”
