Investigation into Tamamyan Case Might Go to Court by End of this Month

It’s likely that the criminal investigation into the case of former head of the RA Police General Department of Criminal Intelligence Hovhannes Tamamyan will wrap up before the end of this month and the case be sent to court.

Tamamyan’s attorney Vaghinak Gevorgyan yesterday conveyed this news to local daily Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”), adding that there might be surprises during the investigation and the investigation process is unpredictable, not specifying what he meant specifically.

Tamamyan was arrested late March 2011 on on charges of abuse of power and has since been kept under arrest pending trial. He is accused of deliberately mishandling a police investigation into the May 12, 2010 murder of 23-year-old Khachik Mkrtchyan. He and the police chief of Yerevan’s Arabkir district, Colonel Varuzhan Adamyan, were dismissed from their positions late February 2011.

As reported by RFE/RL’s Armenian service, prosecutors say police investigators overseen by Tamamyan deliberately failed to prosecute the murder perpetrator and charged another individual instead, presumably in return for a massive kickback.