Month: February 2012

MONUMENTAL PLAN: PUBLIC COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEE BACKS IDEA TO BUILD NOAH’S ARK REPLICA
By Gohar Abrahamyan

ArmeniaNow
28.02.12 | 10:39

The subcommittee on culture at the Public Council, a presidential
advisory body, has approved of an ambitious initiative to build an
exact replica of Noah’s Ark, using biblical dimensions, in Yerevan.

Plans for such an installment on the hilltop of Victory Park have
drawn mostly positive responses so far, but the project is still at
the stage of discussion.

The initiative group for the Noah’s Ark complex was set up two years
ago and has been supported by a number of local scholars, public
and political figures, businessmen as well as some 150 scholars from
outside Armenia (among the backers are popular actor Sos Sargsyan,
well-known poet Aramayis Sahakyan, people’s painter Levon Tokmajyan,
and others). The authors of the project and its backers give
assurances that if built, the massive structure will also serve as
a scientific-educational and historical-cultural center besides its
apparent main purpose of being a tourist attraction.

The project that has an estimated cost of $20 million (the investors
are the Armare company president and the director of the Fun Time Ltd.

operating in the amusement park) had been submitted to the Yerevan
Municipality, the Ministry of Culture, the prime minister and the
president.

Martun Harutyunyan, the author and implementer of the project, who
is also director of the Arts Enterprise Ltd. and president of the
Armare company, says the chief architect at the Yerevan Municipality
submitted the project to the Public Council’s subcommittee for culture,
which gave a positive conclusion. “Now it is being considered at the
Public Council’s urban planning subcommittee,” he adds.

The structure of gigantic proportions (132 meters long, 22 meters wide
and 13 meters tall) is expected to be installed with its front facing
Mount Ararat (where biblical Noah’s Ark came to rest after the great
flood), at a high point in Victory Park, which, as the authors of the
project say, is an area where “there are no trees or other greenery”.

“We present the project, the area where corresponding specialists are
to carry out examinations, and if they find if appropriate, then the
decision on the allotment of land will be made. Now we are waiting
for this decision,” says Toros Umrikyan, one of the authors of the
project who heads the Fun Time Ltd. at the amusement park. He adds
that as initiators they are also interested in the public opinion,
as well as in the views, proposals and observations of specialists.

The first floor of the four-storey construction (which would cover an
area of 10,000 square meters) would include eight statues of people
and 120 statues of animals, universal relics, utensils. A cinema, a
conference hall, office rooms would be housed on the second floor. The
third floor would have 40 guest rooms for tourists, while the fourth
floor would have a hall for government and state receptions as well
as rooms.

Special telescopes would be installed in the upper part of the Ark,
which will offer a unique opportunity to see Mount Ararat very close.

Member of the Noah’s Ark replica construction group, Chairman of the
Painters’ Union of Armenia Karen Aghamyan says such an opportunity
should not be missed.

“The concept of Noah’s Ark is accepted universally and it enables
us to have a foothold in Armenia that will generate interest towards
our country, as it will show that Noah had come down here and mankind
continued its development right from here,” says Aghamyan.

Another project enthusiast, writer Meruzhan Ter-Gulanyan, thinks that
“Noah’s Ark is an idea of God’s chosen people.”

“Noah’s Ark is a letter that God had sent us and till today we haven’t
opened the envelope. We should realize this and taken upon ourselves
with dignity the task of building an ark as God’s chosen people,”
says Ter-Gulanyan.

ARMENIAN MPS COMMEMORATE VICTIMS OF SUMGAYIT POGROMS

AEMENPRESS
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
YERVAN

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: The National Assembly of Armenia
started its sitting today with a minute of silence to commemorate the
victims of the Sumgayit pogroms. Chairman of the National Assembly
Samvel Nikoyan said the tragic days of Sumgayit pogroms have been
sealed in the memories of all Armenians.

The Sumgait pogrom was a pogrom that targeted the Armenian population
of the Azerbaijani town of Sumgayit during February 1988. On February
27, 1988, mobs made up largely of ethnic Azeris formed into groups
that went on to attack and kill Armenians both on the streets and in
their apartments; widespread looting and a general lack of concern
from police officers allowed the situation to worsen. The violence
in Sumgait was unprecedented. On February 29, a small contingent of
soviet troops entered the city and unsuccessfully attempted to quell
the rioting.

The massacres were nothing but a response to the peaceful
demonstrations of the Nagorno Karabakh people demanding their
constitutional right to self-determination.

ITALIAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA HIGHLIGHTS REINFORCEMENT OF ARMENIAN-ITALIAN CULTURAL TIES

AEMENPRESS
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
YERVAN

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: Presentation of Saint Gregory the
Illuminator in Naples catalogue published in Armenian and Italian
languages took place on February 28 at the Italian embassy in Armenia.

“I am getting convinced how important is the reinforcement of cultural
ties between the two countries. We have deep historic-cultural ties,”
Italian ambassador to Armenia Bruno Scapini said. In his opinion,
Armenian-Italian cultural cooperation is on a high level and its
preservation is an important condition and impetus for the development
of the countries.

“I am very proud of this cooperation which has been intensified and
reinforced especially during the recent period,” the ambassador said.

In his opinion the presence of Armenian culture is everywhere in Italy.

“The goal of the Ministry of Culture is to search and find trace of
Armenian culture in all the countries of the world,” deputy minister
Arthur Poghosyan said.

ARMENIAN LIBRARIES DIGITALIZED

AEMENPRESS
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
YERVAN

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: Four libraries are being digitalized
in Armenia. Director of the National Library Tigran Zargaryan told
the reporters today that first magazines and periodicals will be
digitized. Currently the number of digitalized books reaches about
1 million but the number will grow.

“The digitalization process have started since 2001 and currently the
1-2% of the Armenian literature has been digitalized,” Zargaryan said.

He said the digitized books are being read from all the corners of
the world.

He said it has been done under the auspices of the Open Society
Institute and currently state-funded. “The digitalization process
will not result in job cut but vice versa,” Zargaryan said.

The digitalized books may be read at and
websites.

VACANCIES TO BE CREATED FOR ARMENIA’S REPRESENTATIVES IN NATO

AEMENPRESS
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
YERVAN

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: The government of Armenia will open
vacancies for representatives of Armenia in NATO. The issue is
included on the agenda of cabinet sitting of Armenia March 1. The
decision is connected with the changes of the names of offices of
Armenian Defense Ministry’s representatives agreed with the reforms in
NATO agencies.

The adoption of the decision will give an opportunity to organize the
international military cooperation effectively as well as coordinate
works.

According to the Defense Ministry the opening of vacancies in NATO
will give an opportunity to increase the efficiency of military
cooperation with NATO and on the other hand will raise Armenia’s
international image.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ISRAEL WOULDN’T WARN US ABOUT IRAN STRIKE

AEMENPRESS
FEBRUARY 28, 2012
YERVAN

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 28, ARMENPRESS: Israeli officials say they won’t
warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against
Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official
familiar with the discussions. The pronouncement, delivered in a
series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead
of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is
necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the
likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to
stop Israel’s potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the
Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a
temporary setback to Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud
Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors
to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
the White House national security adviser and the director of national
intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers, all trying to close the trust
gap between Israel and the U.S. over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear
ambitions.

Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have
traveled to Israel for talks, the U.S. official said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

THE BLOODY TRACES OF ‘SUMGAIT’
Leonid Martirossian

Monday, 27 February 2012 16:06

Editor-in-chief of Azat Artsakh newspaper

“Times New Roman”,”serif”;} These days, the 24th anniversary of the
Sumgait pogroms will be commemorated. Three days â~@~S from February
27 to February 29 of the leap year of 1988, fierce and unpunished
massacre of innocent people was carried out in this Azerbaijani
city. An Armenian massacre took place there. The people were killed
just for being Armenians… The last days of this February, the leap
year of 2012, our people will also pay tribute to the memory of the
innocent victims of that terrible tragedy, which took the lives of
dozens and dozens of our compatriots. A week ago, on February 20,
we marked another event – the 24th anniversary of the resolution of
the session of the Nagorno Karabakh Oblast Soviet of People’s Deputies
on soliciting before the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijani SSR and the
Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR on the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh
from the structure of Azerbaijan to that of Armenia. It is important
to note that this decision was made by purely constitutional means,
basing on the free will of the people of Nagorno Karabakh. An outside
observer can consider strange the reference to these two seemingly
unrelated events, consequently, failing to catch the connection between
them. But, they are related to each other quite directly, and it may
seem strange only to those unfamiliar with the criminal essence of the
Azerbaijani authorities, both in the Soviet period and nowadays. Years
and even centuries will pass, but these two events will go together
and live in the history in a weekly distance from each other.

The Armenian pogroms of the late February of 1988 were the result
of the targeted state anti-Armenian policy of Azerbaijan, and the
monstrous ATROCITIES of “sumgait” were the response of the Azerbaijani
authorities to the PEACEFUL demand of the Karabakh people put forward
within the democratic processes in the then USSR. Azerbaijan had
a single goal – to make the Armenian population of Artsakh abandon
the idea of â~@~Kâ~@~Kreunification with Armenia, at the same time
preventing a political solution to the issue via this bloody blackmail
of the Soviet Center. However, it is worth mentioning that Azerbaijan’s
concerns about the possible ‘pro-Karabakh’ actions of the Kremlin were
in vain, as the Soviet leadership in President Gorbachev, in fact,
was consolidated with the nationalist leadership of Azerbaijan.

Numerous eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, investigation and
trial materials conclusively confirm that the events in Sumgait were
an act of genocide that was planned and carried out by the authorities
of Azerbaijan with the criminal connivance of Gorbachev’s regime. To
fulfill the Kremlin’s state order, the single criminal case was split
up into individual episodes and qualified as acts of hooligan elements,
though even then some of the USSR Prosecutor’s Office investigators
directly called the Sumgait events genocide.

Since then, nearly a quarter of a century has passed. Soviet Moscow
does not exist; however, the criminal nationalist Baku regime is
preserved â~@~S it committed bloody crimes against the Armenian people:
the pogroms in Baku, Gandzak, Shamkhor, Mingechaur accompanied by
the killing and deportation of civilians, the brutal war against the
independent NKR … All this convincingly proves that Sumgait was part
of Azerbaijan’s state policy on eliminating the Armenian ethnic group.

This policy is still underway.

We have not heard yet any repentance for Sumgait and other crimes
committed by Azerbaijan. Moreover, in this country, in strict
accordance with the same anti-Armenian state policy, glorification of
the executioners and criminals takes place. Sumgait, where murderers
were proclaimed heroes, echoed in Budapest exactly 16 years later,
in the February of 2004. It was here that Azeri officer Ramil Safarov,
taking training courses within the NATO program Partnership for Peace
(!!!), committed brutal murder of his classmate, Armenian officer
Gurgen Margaryan.

Acquaintance with the materials of the case, as well as with the
reaction to this crime in Azerbaijan itself clearly demonstrates the
genetic link between the â~@~Xsumgait and the â~@~Xbudapestâ~@~Y. Their
â~@~Xrelationshipâ~@~Y is simply amazing, although it is, frankly
speaking, quite natural. “The murder was planned and was notable
for its brutality”, read the verdict of the Budapest Court. This
formulation fully characterizes the atrocities committed in
Sumgait. Next, like with the ‘sumgait’, the action of murderer Safarov
was considered in the Azerbaijani society as a sacrifice for the sake
of Azerbaijan; moreover, some officials, including representatives
of the presidential administration, as well as MPs and politicians
have repeatedly urged to award the murderer the title of ‘Hero of
Azerbaijan’. And finally, “During the judicial investigation Safarov
did not show any signs of remorse for his deeds” – this is another
quotation from the noted verdict. In fact, nothing else could be
expected, because he had the example of his own country, which did
not repent of Sumgait. So, we can speak of a deep crisis that has
struck Azerbaijan, where a new generation of racists is growing –
the crisis of public conscience poisoned with the toxin of hatred
towards Armenians, which is in a step from the hatred towards humanity
in general.

Fortunately, there is a difference between the ‘sumgait’ and the
‘budapest’ – in the second case, the criminal was deservedly punished
and sentenced to life imprisonment. Will the â~@~Xsumgaitâ~@~Y get
its deserved punishment? And who will the judge be?

SUMGAIT IS UNPUNISHED GENOCIDE

Tuesday, 28 February 2012 10:58

On February 26-29, 1988, with the actual support of the Azerbaijani
authorities and the connivance of the Soviet leadership, a massacre
of Armenians was carried out in the city of Sumgait, the Azerbaijani
Soviet Socialist Republic, which shocked the international community
with its savagery and brutality.

The Sumgait massacre of Armenians was committed in response to the
Karabakh people’s legitimate expression of will for reunification
with Armenia and became the embodiment of the Azerbaijani authorities’
policy of hatred towards Armenians conducted during the entire Soviet
period. The mass pogroms of Armenians in ‘international’ Sumgait were
intended to block a possible solution to the issue, to frighten the
Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh with the prospects of new bloody actions
and to make them abandon their national-liberation movement. Dozens
of people were killed with sadistic cruelty; a considerable part of
them was burned alive after having been beaten, tortured, and violated.

Hundreds of people were disabled for life and thousands became
refugees…

“After Stalin’s atrocities nothing took place in our country to
throw us so far back – from civilization to savagery”, wrote those
days scientists from Moscow in their “Open letter to the friends
in Armenia”.

The massacre of Armenians in Sumgait was thoroughly organized,
including from the ideological and psychological points of view. At
the anti-Armenian gathering-like rallies, which started on February
26 in the central square, the municipal leaders openly called upon
the participants for violence against the Armenians.

On February 27, the ‘rallies’ escalated into acts of violence. The
first ‘rally’ in front of the building of the Sumgait City Party
Committee was attended by about 50 people; the next day, the number
of participants grew to several thousands. In her speech, Second
Secretary of the City Party Committee Melek Bairamova demanded that
Armenians left Azerbaijan; Azerbaijani poet Khydyr Alovlu concluded
his speech by saying: “Death to Armenians!”

In addition to the city leadership, representatives of the law
enforcement agencies were on the tribune, and it wasn’t accidental
that unprecedented facts of inaction and heartlessness of the Interior
employees were fixed during the pogroms.

Following is a fragment from the indictment on criminal case 18/60233
on accusation of Akhmed Imani ogly Akhmedov, Ilham Azat ogly Ismailov,
and Yavar Giyas ogly Jafarov: “Answering the question of lawyer
Shaposhnikova “Why did you not call your father, who was in service
then, to tell him about what was happening in your block?”, witness D.

Zarbaliev (the witness’ father worked in the militia in Sumgait) said:
“And why did I need to call? The militia knew about it; everybody
knew about it. It was not the first day of the pogroms”.

An open atmosphere of mass psychosis and hysteria was formed at the
‘rallies’. Those on the tribunes called upon the rally participants to
be true to the credit of the Muslims and to unite in a war against the
‘infidels’. The thugs were inflamed by, actually, fascist appeals,
heated by alcohol, which was distributed freely out of trucks, and
drugged; convinced of their own impunity, they continued with renewed
impetus the pogroms of Armenians’ apartments, their mass beating
and killing, which lasted until late at night. The crowd was headed
by none other than First Secretary of the Sumgait City Committee of
the Communist Party Jahangir Muslimzade, with the national flag of
Azerbaijan in his hands. The gangs were headed also by some prominent
people in Sumgait – the director of secondary school #25, an actress
of the Arablinsky Theater, and others.

“In peacetime, the Soviet Union had never experienced what happened
then. Gangs of about ten to fifty or more people strolled through the
city, broke windows, burned cars, but the main thing was that they
were looking for Armenians”, wrote Rodina (Motherland) magazine (#
4, 1994, pp. 82-90).

On February 28, the number of thugs armed with iron bars, axes,
hammers, and other improvised means considerably increased. The crowd
clearly knew its tasks. The pogrom-makers, who were divided into
groups, broke into Armenians’ apartments and killed the people in
their own homes; but more often they took them out in the street or in
the yard for making a public mock of them. After painful humiliation,
the victims were poured with petrol and burned alive.

Following is a fragment from Hasan Mamedov’s testimony (record of
a judicial hearing, Moscow, USSR, the Supreme Court, October 18 –
November 18, 1988):

“I saw that a middle-aged man was brought out of the entrance and
beaten, mostly from behind… He was lying about three meters from
me. A fire was burning nearby. Nizami Mageramov took the guy’s legs
and Fizuli Fataliyev took his hands; they lifted the guy off the ground
and threw him into the fire. His body turned out to be in the fire and
his legs were out of it. I saw it clearly, as it was light. The guy
thrown into the fire still showed signs of life. I determined this,
seeing how he was trying to roll out of the fire. But, a guy in a black
jacket and jeans was holding the guy down in the fire with a piece
of reinforcement rod, preventing him from rolling out of the fire…”

Only on February 29 military forces were brought into the city of
Sumgait, but they did not immediately establish control over the city.

The killings and pogroms of Armenians were going on. Only in the
evening the military units started taking decisive actions.

The central authorities were not interested in establishing the exact
number of victims in the Sumgait bacchanalia. Officially, 36 Armenian
and 6 Azerbaijani deceased persons were stated. Meanwhile, British
researcher Tom de Waal wrote in his book Black Garden. Between Peace
and War: “…If you pay attention to the serial numbers of medical
death certificates, you’ll find out that at least 115 bodies were
recorded those days in the morgues… Such a number of natural deaths
is excluded, at least because no more than 72 deaths were registered
in the previous two months” (“February 1988: Azerbaijan”, chapter 2).

The fact that the Genocide of the Armenian population of Sumgait
was planned in advance and was not a spontaneous action of a group
of hooligans, as the Soviet authorities and judicial agencies tried
to present it, is testified by some irrefutable facts: production
of cold arms for the pogroms at the industrial enterprises of the
city; making lists of the Armenians living in the city with the aim
of their killing; the authorities’ inaction; speeches of specially
trained provokers at the rallies for manipulating the crowd; the
local militia’s assistance to the thugs; disconnecting the phones
in the Armenians’ apartments; cutting off the electricity supply in
the blocks where the pogroms were going on; accurate coordination
of the gangs’ actions; providing the thugs with reinforcement rods,
pipe scraps, rocks and bottles with gasoline and alcohol; blocking the
entrances to the city by armed groups; lack of any assistance to the
victims by medical workers of the city; removal of the crimes’ traces
(hasty repair of the smashed shops, apartments, and other facilities),
and hiding the organizers and many executors of the Genocide from
the justice.

Following is a fragment from the indictment on criminal case 18/60233
on accusation of Akhmed Imani ogly Akhmedov, Ilham Azat ogly Ismailov,
Yavar Giyas ogly Jafarov: Witness M. Ilyasov, Russian: “From the window
of my apartment I saw a GAS-24 black car to drive up to our block. This
car was approached by two men out of the crowd… Without leaving the
car, the men sitting in it said something to those who had come up
to them, and they immediately went back into the crowd. After that,
the pogroms started with renewed fury… I think they fixed in advance
the addresses of the Armenians. I came to this conclusion, because the
killers entered accurately the entrances where the Armenians lived…

All this was not an act of hooliganism; it was an action against
a particular nation, against the Armenians. It was not against the
Russians or some other nations, it was against the Armenians; they
were looking for only Armenians”.

“Witness S. Guliyev said at the hearing: “Those people were gathered
together more than one day, as it is impossible to gather thousands
of people in one day.”

“Witness M. Mamedov: “The megaphone-holder (Ahmed Ahmedov) announced
that the crowd did not need to smash the apartments, as they would
remain to them, they only needed to kill the Armenians”.

“Witness T. Tahmazov, apartment block manager: “Representative of the
Azerbaijani Communist Party Central Committee Ganifaeva instructed
the rally participants to burn all the smashed things and cover them
with ground. They did so, and very quickly. The next morning, the City
Executive Committee sent repair and construction teams to block 412
‘a’ for removing the bodies and the smashed things”.

Sumgait Communist newspaper (#57, May 13, 1988) wrote: “In the days
of the heavy situation, axes, knives, and other items that could
be used by hooligan elements were made in the shop of the factory
(tube-rolling)”.

It is quite obvious that some persons, who were not identified as
a result of the investigation, had created favorable conditions for
carrying out the mass massacre of Armenians.

On February 29, 1988, a session of the Politburo of the USSR Communist
Party Central Committee took place in the Kremlin, at which it was
stated for the first time officially, though classified as ‘top
secret’, that the mass pogroms and massacre had been carried out in
Sumgait on an ethnic basis, that is exclusively against Armenians.

However, the USSR official structures were quick to taboo the topic of
‘Sumgait’, artificially dividing the mass slaughter of Armenians into
separate crimes. The crimes, which, according to the International
Convention on Genocide, must be assessed as crimes against the
humanity, were classified as crimes committed out of ‘hooliganism
motives’. In other words, the committed Genocide was veiled, and its
organizers were defended at the official level.

In particular, employees of the municipal and law enforcement agencies
remained unpunished, though many witnesses stated some well-known
persons in the city, who were directly involved in the ‘rallies’.

Moreover, Sumgait Prosecutor Ismet Gaibov, less than a year after the
massacre of Armenians in the city, where he ‘carried out’ the control
over law and order, was… appointed Prosecutor General of Azerbaijan.

Only the Communist leader of Sumgait Muslimzade was dismissed from his
position, though he wasn’t either brought to justice. It is rather
because at the next plenary session of the Azerbaijani Communist
Party Central Committee well-informed Muslimzade directly accused the
Republic’s leadership of organizing the massacre: “On May 21, 1988,
at the plenary session of the Azerbaijani SSR Communist Party Central
Committee, the former First Secretary of the Sumgait City Committee of
the Communist Party blamed also the Republic’s leaders for the tragic
events in Sumgait. The day before, he stated considerable details
of this at the Bureau of the Azerbaijani Communist Party Central
Committee, when his personal responsibility was discussed, what can be
found in the verbatim records” (the Epoch , # 4, September 13, 1990).

Unfortunately, the February 27-29 pogroms in Sumgait, organized at
the highest state level, are not given yet an adequate political and
legal assessment, and the Moscow trial did not become the Nuremberg
trial, because the roots of the mass crimes were not identified.

The policy of silence related to the Genocide in Sumgait, concealment
of the reasons, which gave rise to it, and leaving its real organizers
unpunished made possible the ethnic cleansing carried out by the
Azerbaijani SSR authorities throughout the Republic, which culminated
in the January 1990 bloody bacchanalia in the Republic’s capital city
of Baku and led to further large-scale military aggression against
the people of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

Meanwhile, the truth about Sumgait, like the materials of the Nuremberg
trial, is needed to the people for preventing a new ‘brown plague’.

Anyone replacing Syria’s Assad will be worse for ethnic minorities – expert

NEWS.AM
February 28, 2012 | 00:21

YEREVAN. – At the moment military intervention into Syria is not the
point, and what happens now may be characterized as measures taken
by foreign players to destroy Bashar al Assad’s regime from inside,
expert Sergey Minasyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The expert considers the foreign powers are Sunni Arab states, as
well as the U.S. and Turkey, which try to cooperate with the Syrian
opposition but it is still unclear what it will lead to.

As for the Armenian community in Syria, the expert believes that
regardless of who will come to power after Assad, he will certainly
be worse for all the ethnic minorities.

Besides, if the regime changes, the Armenian community in Lebanon
will increase. Some Armenians may leave for America, France or come
to Armenia.

From: A. Papazian

ARMENIAN SOLDIER WOUNDED BY ADVERSARY’S BULLET

news.am
February 28, 2012 | 15:12

YEREVAN. – According to preliminary data, Armenian MOD recruit,
Private Arman Sedrakyan, who is serving in a military unit, received a
gunshot wound from the bullet fired by the adversary on February 25,
MOD Investigation Department Public Relations Senior Officer Meri
Sargsyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Sedrakyan was initially taken to Noyemberyan Hospital, but he was
subsequently transferred to Yerevan Military Hospital. At present,
he is in satisfactory condition.

Meri Sargsyan also informed that MOD Investigation Department has
launched a criminal case, in this connection, and on charges of
murder attempt.

Arman Sedrakyan was recruited from Etchmiadzin city in 2010.