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News.am, 15.02.2019

Armenia’s Former Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan disseminated a video message, in which spoke on the army’s engagement during the tragic events that occurred in capital city Yerevan, in March 2008, and top secret Order No. 0038 which was issued in connection with these events.

“Order 0038 is an internal departmental order,” he said, in particular. “Order 0038 is an extremist approach at the core of the March 1 tragedy, and is not objective.”

He stated that this order, which was given by then Defense Minister Mikayel Harutyunyan, had no action against the people. Ohanyan noted that Harutyunyan, for whom an arrest warrant has been issued along the lines of the criminal case into aforesaid tragic events, had not fled, but rather he did not believe in that case.

Ohanyan added that he does not accept the charge that has been brought against him, also along the lines of this criminal case.

“I consider the treatment toward second President Robert Kocharyan [who is also charged along the lines of this criminal case], keeping him in custody, to be patently wrong,” he stressed, in particular, in the video message.

In 2008, Seyran Ohanyan was the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia, and—together with several other former officials—he has been charged within the framework of the criminal case into the tragic events that transpired in Yerevan in March 2008—and under Article 300.1 Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code; that is, breaching Armenia’s constitutional order, in conspiracy with others.

On March 1 and 2, 2008 the then authorities of Armenia used force against the opposition members who were rallying in downtown Yerevan, and against the results of the presidential election on February 19, 2008. Eight demonstrators as well as two servicemen of the internal troops were killed in the clashes. But no one had been brought to account for these deaths, to this day.