Former President Levon Ter-Petrosian was questioned by an Armenian-law-enforcement body on Thursday as a witness in its ongoing investigation into the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.
His press secretary, Arman Musinian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that the interrogation lasted for around 90 minutes. Musinian gave no other details.
Ter-Petrosian, who served as Armenia’s first president from 1991-1998, was the main opposition candidate in a presidential held in February 2008. He staged nonstop street protests in Yerevan after rejecting as fraudulent official vote results that gave victory to Serzh Sarkisian, outgoing President Robert Kocharian’s preferred successor.
Security forces broke up those protests on March 1, 2008. Eight protesters and two policemen died in street clashes that broke out in Yerevan on that day.
Citing the deadly violence, Kocharian declared a state of emergency and ordered Armenian army units into the capital. He accused Ter-Petrosian of attempting to forcibly seize power. Dozens of Ter-Petrosian allies, including Armenia’s current Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, were subsequently jailed on charges of organizing “mass disturbances” which they strongly denied.
Ter-Petrosian rejected the official version of events, saying that Kocharian resorted to lethal force to enforce the official results of a rigged election.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) blamed the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition for the violence until last spring’s “velvet revolution” which brought Pashinian to power. It now says that Kocharian illegally used army units against the protesters.
Kocharian, who denies the accusations as politically motivated, was arrested in December. Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenian strongly condemned the arrest, saying that Pashinian is exacting “personal revenge” against the man who ruled the county from 1998-2008.
Sarkisian was reportedly questioned by the SIS late last week.
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