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BAKU: Armenian Opposition Blames Government For Police Deaths In Yer

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  • BAKU: Armenian Opposition Blames Government For Police Deaths In Yer

    ARMENIAN OPPOSITION BLAMES GOVERNMENT FOR POLICE DEATHS IN YEREVAN

    Trend News Agency
    Jan 9 2009
    Azerbaijan

    Armenia's main opposition alliance insisted on Thursday that its
    supporters used no firearms in the March 1 clashes with security
    forces that left two police servicemen dead, reported Armenialiberty.

    Suren Abrahamian, a leading member of the Armenian National Congress
    (HAK), said the Armenian police themselves are responsible for the
    death of at least one of those servicemen, Captain Hamlet Tadevosian.

    Tadevosian commanded a detachment of Armenian interior troops that
    clashed with thousands of opposition protesters who barricaded
    themselves in downtown Yerevan after security forces broke-up their
    non-stop demonstrations in the city's Liberty Square. According to
    state prosecutors, he was killed by a hand grenade thrown at him by
    one of the protesters.

    Abrahamian, himself a retired police general who served as interior
    minister in 1999, brushed aside the official theory, saying that a
    combat grenade would have killed more security personnel and left
    traces on the ground. He argued that forensic experts claimed to have
    found only three pieces of shrapnel in the dead officer's body.

    According to Abrahamian, Tadevosian was most probably killed by an
    explosion of a tear gas or stun grenade used by security forces on
    that day. "His death was the result of an unprofessional, wrong use
    of special means by the authorities," he told journalists. "There is
    no way the protesters could have used combat hand grenades," he said.

    According to the official version of events, tear gas grenades fired
    from a virtually point-blank range killed three of the eight civilians
    who lost their lives on March 1. Prosecutor-General reiterated
    it at a December 25 meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Marie
    Yovanovitch. Hovsepian claimed that only four policeman fired tear
    gas during the clashes and that law-enforcement authorities has still
    not determined which of them caused the three civilian deaths.

    None of more than 100 opposition members and supporters arrested
    following the unrest was charged with murdering Tadevosian and the
    other police casualty, Tigran Abgarian. The 19-year-old interior
    troop conscript was shot and fatally wounded in the neck.
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