Father of Dead Soldier Promised to Disseminate March 1 Audio Recording

Sargis Sargsyan, the father of one of the soldiers killed in Martuni army base on July 28, 2010, informed a local daily Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”) correspondent that he has an audio recording in which officers stationed at the Martuni army base are speaking about the role of their unit in the events of March 1, 2008.

Recall that mass protests against alleged electoral fraud, organized by supporters of unsuccessful presidential candidate Ter-Petrossian, followed the presidential election of Feb. 19, 2008, in Armenia. On Mar. 1, 2008, national police and military forces, called in to disperse the crowds, used “excessive force and violence” which left 10 people dead and many more wounded.

Sargis Sargsyan asked the defense ministers of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia two questions: “Do Armenian soldiers have the right to rest or not? And the second question: If a conscript is sleeping at his post, how is he to be punished?” Sargsyan also said if in one month he doesn’t receive a satisfactory response, he will upload the audio recording, which is currently in the hands of his acquaintance in France, onto YouTube and Twitter.

“Believe me, there are many interesting facts in those recordings,” he told the Haykakan Jamanak journalist, reports the daily. Sargsyan’s son, as well as 5 other conscripts, according to new evidence, were killed as a result of incidents which came about after they were caught sleeping at their posts.