Armenian General Accused Of Kidnapping Political Opponents

14, October 2005
Armenia Liberty
By Astghik Bedevian

A top Armenian army general {Deputy Defense Minister Manvel Grigorian} was alleged on Friday to have kidnapped a dozen supporters of a politician who is challenging one of his protégés {Gagik Avagian} in the upcoming local election in Echmiadzin, a town 20 kilometers south of Yerevan.

At least nine men representing the election challenger, Yervand Aghvanian, reportedly disappeared during a disrupted campaign rally on Thursday and remained missing as of late Friday. [...]. Police in Echmiadzin, however, refused to investigate the alleged hostage taking.
[...]
[...]. Susanna Harutiunian, a former election candidate who withdrew from the race [...] claimed that the hostage-takers contacted her by phone in the morning. “I first heard a litany of abuse,” she said. “They then said if we don’t stop [campaigning], none of [the missing activists] will return. But I told them that our struggle won’t stop.”
[...]
A group of Aghvanian supporters gathered outside President Robert Kocharian’s official residence in Yerevan on Thursday night and the next morning to request the Armenian leader’s intervention in the tense run-up to Sunday’s election of Echmiadzin’s mayor. Officials in the presidential administration refused to meet them.
[...]
Avagian {is the deputy chief of the local electricity network, he} [...] enjoys the backing of the regional governor and two member of the Armenian parliament representing Echmiadzin and the surrounding area. One of them, Hrant Grigorian, is the general’s nephew, while the other, Hakob Hakobian, is notorious for spending two weeks in a prison in the United Arab Emirates last January on suspicion of shop-lifting.
[...]
“Fear is running high here,” said Susanna Harutiunian whose small apartment serves as the headquarters of the Aghvanian campaign. Finding office space in Echmiadzin, she claimed, is impossible for those who challenge General Grigorian.

Echmiadzin and surrounding villages have long been considered a de facto fiefdom of Grigorian and another top army general, Seyran Saroyan. The two former truck drivers rose to prominence during the war 1991-1994 for Nagorno-Karabakh, first as militia leaders and then as commanders of regular army units. They both have extensive business interests in the Echmiadzin area and other parts of Armenia.
[...]
Grigorian became embroiled in another scandal earlier this year when his bodyguards reportedly dragged a priest out of his car and beat him for not yielding to the mustachioed general’s motorcade. Nobody was prosecuted in connection with the reported violence.

It is still not known how the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II, reacted to it. [...]. “This is Echmiadzin and I would like to draw His Holiness’s attention to what has been happening here. He is still keeping silent. How can he tolerate so much lawlessness in a town that hosts his headquarters?”

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.