YEREVAN — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President Vahagn Khachaturyan, and National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan laid flowers at the “Influence and Counteraction” memorial monument in a park adjacent to Grigor Lusavorich Street in Yerevan, paying tribute to the victims of March 1, 2008.
In the early morning hours of March 1, 2008, police forces moved to disperse opposition demonstrators who had spent the night at Liberty Square in Yerevan, protesting the official results of the presidential election.
Later that same day, clashes erupted between protesters and security forces near the Alexander Myasnikyan statue and surrounding areas. As a result of the violence, ten people were killed and hundreds were injured.
Eighteen years after the March 1 killings, none of the deaths of the ten victims have been fully solved. This is despite Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement eight years ago that the March 1 case had, in essence, been fully uncovered.
In recent days, new arrests have been made in connection with the case. Hovhannes Tamamyan, First Deputy Head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Police, has been detained. Charges have also been filed against former Deputy Police Chief of Yerevan Robert Melkonyan and former Chief of Police of Armenia Valeri Osipyan.
Four years ago, Armenia’s second president Robert Kocharyan and three of his senior associates were acquitted in the March 1 case. However, the case was reopened a year ago, and in January, a judge of the Anti-Corruption Court upheld new charges against Robert Kocharyan, Seyran Ohanyan, Yuri Khachaturov, and Armen Gevorgyan.
In a ruling issued last September, the European Court of Human Rights found that Armenia had violated the right to life in the majority of the victims’ cases.
