Epress.am News from Armenia
The family of Karen Avetisyan, a conscript of the Nagorno-Karabakh defense army who was found dead in the combat position of his military unit on April 25 with a gunshot wound through his chin, do not believe that their son has committed suicide. In a conversation with the local Hraparak newspaper, the family have said that the timing of the alleged suicide in particular gives room for serious doubt.
“[Karen] was looking forward to April 26 because his mom was to go and spend a whole day with him in Karabakh. He was very happy and very excited about this, therefore he could hardly be suicidal. What’s more, the bullet entered his head from the lower part of the right ear and exited through the temple. A suicidal person would not have shot himself that way. Finally, the preliminary investigation has yet to be completed, but the parents have already been told [by officials] that [Karen] has committed suicide. All of this was enough to convince the family that Karen was in fact killed,” Hraparak writes.
At Karen’s funeral, the paper continues, his uncle attacked one of the officers who had come from the Karabakh military unit and had the imprudence to say: “Karen was going to the toilet… If he had gone half an hour later, he would have survived.”
“The uncle and everyone else was surprised at the officer’s words. So could it be that Karen Avetisyan did not commit suicide, as reported?” Hraparak asks.
The soldier’s mother, Alvard Abrahamyan, has, for her part, told the paper about the irksome questions she had been asked by an investigator; “He asked whether I was his stepmon, whether my daughter was from another husband. He said that I had driven him mad because he was not my biological son. I told him I would break everything I had on his head. They wanted to make it him that he was adopted, that I had treated him badly and somehow driven him to suicide.”
According to Hraparak, 5 soldier’s of the same military unit have been arrested as part of the investigation into Avetisyan’s death.