PACE Co-Rapporteur John Prescott Met with Families of Mar. 1 Victims

At 9 am today in the Armenia Marriott Hotel, John Prescott, one of two co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of Armenia, met with family members of the victims of the tragic events of Mar. 1–2, 2008, in Yerevan.

Sargis Qloyan, father of Mar. 1 victim Gor Qloyan, told Epress.am that the meeting lasted 25 minutes, as Prescott was rushing to get to the RA General Prosecutor’s Office.

“Initially he said that he wants to know whether we’re familiar with the materials in the SIS [Armenia’s Special Investigation Service] intermediate report. We said we found out about this report from the internet. He asked whether the materials for the report were compiled without us, and we said yes, they compiled them without us. He also found out from us that in these four years, we haven’t been familiar with the SIS’s written materials,” he said.

According to Qloyan, Prescott confessed that he personally wanted to hear from the parents about this and that meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and General Prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepyan today, he will ask them why the SIS compiled this report without the victims’ families.

“He said that he’s not an investigative body but he knows our pain well and he will raise this at his meetings today,” Sargis Qloyan said.