GYUMRI MAYOR’S INDICTED SON ARRESTED
By Hovannes Shoghikian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
July 20 2007

A fugitive son of Gyumri Mayor Vartan Ghukasian was arrested on Friday
nearly two months after being charged with instigating a high-profile
shootout in Armenia’s second largest city.

Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General said Spartak Ghukasian
surrendered to the police and was immediately taken to a prison in
Artik, a small town near Gyumri.

Ghukasian reportedly led one of the two groups of young men who
exchanged gunfire in broad daylight on May 20. The other group is
thought to have been led by Rustam Sargsian, a son of a prominent
local businessman and former government official. Sargsian and one
of his associates remain on the run.

"Measures are being taken to track down two other individuals charged
within the framework of this criminal case," a spokeswoman for the
prosecutors, Sona Truzian, told RFE/RL.

Ghukasian Jr. turned himself in the day after his controversial father
was summoned to a meeting in Yerevan with Prosecutor-General Aghvan
Hovsepian. A newspaper report on Friday said the Gyumri mayor, who has
claimed to be unaware of his son’s whereabouts, was "offered" to hand
over the suspect to law-enforcement authorities within 24 hours. He was
reportedly received by President Robert Kocharian earlier this week.

In an earlier televised interview, Ghukasian vehemently denied
Spartak’s involvement in the gunfight that left at least two people
wounded. He accused the media and his rivals of discrediting his family
by implicating it in other instances of violence reported in Gyumri
in recent years. He also rejected mounting calls for his resignation.

The flamboyant mayor, who is a senior member of the governing
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), was seriously wounded in a
mysterious drive-by shooting that killed three of his bodyguards
about last April.

The shootout coincided with the May 20 disappearance of a 12-year-old
boy whose decomposed body was found in an abandoned Gyumri shack a
week ago. Many local residents suspect that Robert Simonian may have
been hit by a stray bullet or run over by one of the cars involved
in the shootout.

Investigators have effectively dismissed this theory, saying that
Simonian most probably died as a result of playing with a hand grenade
or another explosive device.

Residents of neighboring houses did not report hearing any explosions
on May 20, however. Many also wonder how the police failed to stumble
on Simonian’s corpse when they scoured the entire shanty town with
sniffer dogs in the days that followed his disappearance.

The prosecutors have said the precise cause of the boy’s death will
be established by a more meticulous forensic examination. According
to Truzian, the examination is still not complete.