Use of Lethal Weapons on March 1 was Justified, Says Head of Special Investigative Group

After the events of Mar. 1, 2008, 1,772 recorded casings overall were found on Grigor Lusavorich St., Mashtots Ave., and Leo St., 340 of which are from unidentified firearms, said Head of the Special Investigative Service (SIS) group charged with investigating the circumstances surrounding the events of Mar. 1–2, 2008, in Yerevan Vahagn Harutyunyan, speaking to reporters in Yerevan on Wednesday.

According to him, those bullet casings did not belong to firearms used by law enforcement officials.

Harutyunyan also stated that during the course of the investigation, more than 200 weapons were studied, which were confiscated by RA police forces.

“Additionally, police officers are being questioned at the same time; that is, police employees who were working on that day. The number of those examined has already reached 200 and they are continuing. What’s being done is to once again clarify and verify [the circumstances surrounding these events] and [to conduct] examinations connected to these videos that have been disseminated [referring to the videos posted online by YouTube user “martimek2008”],” he said.

As for the circumstances surrounding the 10 deaths, Harutyunyan noted that the investigative group has no new facts in this matter.

The preliminary investigation and fact-finding work in this direction are continuing and will still continue, he added.

Speaking also on the use of lethal weapons by police, Harutyunyan said the order to apply special measures on Mar. 1 met the relevant requirements of the Law on RA Police and the Law on Weapons.

“The use of lethal weapons was legitimate,” he said.