Epress.am News from Armenia
Four members of the armed group Sasna Tsrer (Daredevils of Sasun) – Armen Bilyan, Vardan Geravetyan, Arayik Hakobyan, and Hovhannes Vardanyan – are now being charged with, among other things, stealing 14 million drams from an ATM installed in the administrative building of the patrol-guard service regiment of Yerevan’s Erebuni district which they occupied for two weeks last summer. Despite the accusation, however, the allegedly stolen money has yet to be found, the local Zhoghovurd newspaper reports, stressing that after the takeover of the police station, the members of the group did not leave the territory, were constantly watched by police officers, and the money was not removed from the area.
What’s more, the daily writes, the money was not even found during the searches that were conducted in the police station after the men handed themselves over to the police: “In this sense, the version that the group has somehow concealed the money in a more reliable place is also illogical because the men knew that after handing themselves over they would be sentenced to many years of imprisonment.”
Law enforcement officials, Zhoghovurd reports, sent the clothes of the armed group members for examination and found metal particles thereon, which served as the basis for the new accusations.
In conversation with Zhoghovurd, the lawyers of the Sasna Tsrer members unanimously declared that their clients had nothing to do with the stolen money.
“The question then arises as to why these charges were pressed against them when the stolen sum has not even been found. What if this money has been pocketed by other people and not the members of the group? […] It might have even been stolen by police officers while ‘the state had other things to worry about’,” the paper writes.