Nayri Hunanyan May Have Something to Say in Exchange for Freedom

The newspaper 'Zhoghovurd' reports: Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the October 27 terrorist act. On that very day in 1999, during a question-and-answer session with the government, an armed group led by Nayri Hunanyan stormed the hall of the National Assembly, committing an unprecedented act of terrorism that effectively decapitated the state. The victims of this treacherous bullet were eight state officials: National Assembly President Karen Demirchyan, Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Deputy Speakers Yuri Bakhshyan and Ruben Miroyan, MPs Mikhail Kotanyan, Henrik Abrahamyan, and Armanak Armenakyan, and Minister Leonard Petrosyan.

For two decades, the public has been unclear about who the perpetrators of this massacre were, and who the real organizers of the crime were. To this day, claims suggest that there are no masterminds, and the criminals themselves have interpreted it this way. However, this is undoubtedly an implausible, simplistic interpretation. The terrorist group had entered one of the most heavily guarded state territories, armed, reaching the assembly hall, and completing the crime, satisfying the monstrous concept by striking the executed commander’s head with the buttstock of a weapon.

Two decades after the tragedy, it is a fact that 10 witnesses who had very specific information about October 27 are no longer alive. The mother of the main perpetrators, Nayri and Karen Hunanyan, Nattela Galstyan, was found drowned in a river in 2012, and in 2004, witness Hasmik Abrahamyan committed suicide by hanging in the National Assembly building; she was a staff member of the assembly’s transcript division. Another crucial witness, Tigran Naghdalyan, president of the Public Television and Radio Company, was also murdered in 2002 right at his home’s entrance. The circumstances of the other witnesses' deaths are also mysterious and suspicious—electrocution, car accidents, strokes in prison...

Will it ever be known who ordered this crime? Last year, on October 27, Prime Minister Pashinyan stated, 'According to Armenian legislation, new circumstances are necessary to reopen the case. At this moment, I cannot say whether such circumstances exist or not.' Perhaps there are now new circumstances. The new situation is that the head of the crime group, Nayri Hunanyan, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment, has applied for early conditional release. Could he have something to say in exchange for his freedom that might become a newly emerged circumstance, thus also providing a new basis for the investigation of the criminal case?

For further details, refer to today’s issue of the newspaper.