On October 3 during the ANC’s rally opposition leader Levon ter-Petrosyan held an open press-conference, during which he answered questions picked “randomly”. We asked him questions too but he did not answer. We don’t know whether it was because of lack of time or what, but the questions were left without answers. It would be very interesting to hear the answer to our questions from Ter-Petrosyan, especially to the following question: “Since the events of March 1 in 2008 the ANC has been announcing that they would not agree to enter into dialogue with the authorities as far as there is even one political prisoner. It happened and the dialogue started after all political prisoners were released. The ANC did the same when their activist Tigran Arakelyan was arrested and announced that they would be able to continue the dialogue only after their activist would be released. Mr. Ter-Petrosyan, after returning to active politics and heading the ANC neither you nor the ANC have expressed any public opinion about Vano Siradeghyan and have never pushed a precondition to cancel the criminal case against him. Does that mean that the ANC and you do not think that Siradeghyan has been persecuted due to political reasons and agree with the accusations developed by the authorities? How would you explain the fact of being so curious about every activist but not your close friend and ally during the war time and your government?” It is worth mentioning that we discussed this issue even in summer 2009 when the political prisoners were still in jail and the ANC was doing its best to release them, but did not mention the name of Siradeghyan in the list of political prisoners. In fact the first person to be persecuted due to political reason after Ter-Petrosyan stepped off the power was Siradeghyan. By the way, Ter-Petrosyan did not like this question two years ago and evidently escaped from answering. The answer was that it was not the time to tackle the issue of Vano Siradeghyan at that time and he would return to Armenia only after the ANC came back to power (?). It is not excluded that the authorities that released the political prisoners and allowed the opposition to hold demonstrations in the Freedom Square again under the pressure of the opposition would agree to stop the case of Vano Siradeghyan. As far as Ter-Petrosyan has not answered to this question, there will be too many opinions about it.
