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Fugitive Oppositionist Surrenders To Armenian Police

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  • Fugitive Oppositionist Surrenders To Armenian Police

    FUGITIVE OPPOSITIONIST SURRENDERS TO ARMENIAN POLICE

    AZG Armenian Daily
    02/07/2009

    Local

    Pashinian, 34, was one of the most influential and passionate speakers
    at the anti-government protests staged by opposition leader Levon
    Ter-Petrosian. He and several other opposition figures went underground
    following the violent suppression of those protests on March 1-2,
    2008. The authorities have tried unsuccessfully to track down and
    arrest them, Azatutyun reports.

    In a statement posted on his website last week, Pashinian said he
    has decided to come out of hiding and become a "political prisoner"
    after a general amnesty declared by the Armenian authorities on June
    19. About 30 oppositionists jailed following the March 2008 unrest
    have been set free as a result.

    "They will arrest me shortly and I will then be remanded in [pre-trial]
    custody," Pashinian told journalists at the entrance to Armenia's
    Office of the Prosecutor-General. "They will then sentence me to as
    many years in prison as possible."

    "I will continue my struggle in prison," he said before being
    escorted to the police department of Yerevan's Kentron district. He
    was transferred to a maximum security prison, also located in the
    city center, later in the day.

    Neither state prosecutors, nor the Armenian police issued any
    statements in connection with Pashinian's surrender as of Wednesday
    evening. The young editor of the "Haykakan Zhamanak" daily has been
    wanted by them on charges of organizing unsanctioned rallies and
    "mass riots" and defying "representatives of the state authority." The
    charges carry between four and ten years' imprisonment.

    Under an amnesty bill approved by parliament, only oppositionists
    sentenced to up to five years' imprisonment are to be set free. The
    biggest worry of Pashinian's friends and associates is that the
    firebrand activist, who has subjected the Armenian security apparatus
    to relentless criticism, will be ill-treated in custody. Some of
    them gathered outside the Kentron police headquarters in a show of
    solidarity with him.

    "I am confident that with the help of ourselves and all those people
    who have stood by the detainees, the issues of Nikol's liberation and
    restoration of justice will be solved soon," said Vahagn Khachatrian,
    a former Yerevan mayor who himself spent several months in hiding
    last year.

    "Nikol Pashinian has proved that there is no competent national
    security service and police in Armenia," said David Matevosian, one
    of the opposition figures released from prison last week. "Common
    sense and the latest Council of Europe resolution suggest that the
    authorities are obliged to free Nikol."
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