Epress.am News from Armenia
The post-mortem examination of military draftee Tigran Varyan, who was killed on Feb. 29 at a Nagorno-Karbakh military base, which concluded late this afternoon, proved that the young soldier had not committed suicide, but rather was the victim of an intentional murder, Ruben Martirosyan, a specialist with the Yerevan-based Helsinki Association for Human Rights, informed Epress.am.
Martirosyan recalled that investigator Yura Badalyan earlier had declared that Tigran killed himself with the AKM gun he was assigned. However, the autopsy revealed that there was trauma and bruising on different areas of the soldier’s face, around his lips, jaw and nose — the result of blows with a blunt object applied prior to death.
The army doctor present at the autopsy agreed that it’s impossible for such injuries to have been caused by the victim’s own hand.
“It can be assumed that a beating was followed by the shot; that is, suicide is ruled out — this is intentional murder.They should’ve written death by gunshot wound delivered under unconfirmed circumstances — initially characterizing the incident as a suicide is a crime,” said the human rights campaigner.
Tigran’s family also rules out the possibility of suicide, his cousin Tamara Gziryan told Epress.am.
“Yesterday they told us that supposedly Tigran killed himself, but we don’t believe this. We are kept in the dark. We don’t know what to do and who to contact,” she said, adding that serving with Tigran at the same army base was his older brother, who, however, was discharged three months ago. The brother said they had settled into the base and didn’t have any problems with anyone.
“We spoke with Tigran over the phone two days before the incident. He was in high spirits; he had no complaints. So, you see, it’s impossible that he would’ve decided to commit suicide in a day’s time,” said Tamara.