Armenia Plans to Charge Gunmen With Terrorism

Vowing retribution for the slaying of eight top political leaders, Armenian officials Thursday announced that they were seeking terrorism charges that could carry the death penalty against five gunmen who surrendered after attacking the parliament and holding hostages overnight.

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan proclaimed three days of national mourning that will begin today and end with the burial of victims from Wednesday’s slaughter in the capital, Yerevan.

Stunned and angry military leaders demanded that the country’s police and security chiefs be fired for negligence after the five men toting assault rifles gained entry into the parliament building. Interior Minister Suren Abrahamyan was reported by Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency to have tendered his resignation after the army threatened to take action unless justice was done.

“A treacherous and premeditated crime was committed. It was a plot aimed at Armenia’s statehood and against the future of the Armenian nation,” a Defense Ministry statement read. “In such circumstances, the national army cannot stand idly by.”

Kocharyan attempted to calm fears of military intervention in the power vacuum, describing the Defense Ministry’s ominous warning as “an emotional outburst” by officials respectful of the constitution but upset by the horrifying acts of violence, which were aired on national television.

Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisyan, a former defense minister, and Karen S. Demirchyan, parliamentary speaker and Armenia’s Soviet-era leader, were among the dead.

After at least 40 hostages held during the all-night standoff between the gunmen and government forces were freed early Thursday and the attackers surrendered, Kocharyan met with surviving political leaders and was assured of support by opponents as well as allies.

But the motives for the killings remained as mysterious as the attack was shocking. Political analysts and Armenian diplomats dismissed reports that the assailants were attempting a coup, noting that the gunmen were obviously unprepared to seize power. The men demanded television air time to address the nation but put no political conditions on their surrender.

‘A Spontaneous Act of Blind Fury’

The killings also appeared unrelated to the protracted and passionate dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave within neighboring Azerbaijan that has proclaimed independence. Armenia’s ambassador to Russia, Suren Saakyan, told Echo of Moscow radio that there was no chance of the so-called “Karabakh footprint” because the leaders killed had been among the most vocal in defending Armenian interests in the region.

“It looks very much like a spontaneous act of blind fury,” political analyst David Petrosyan of the Noyan Tapan information agency said in a telephone interview from the Armenian capital. “However destructive it turned out, to some extent it reflects the mood that prevails among the most deprived and crisis-stricken layer of Armenian society that is ready to blame the government for the economic plight.”

However, Petrosyan added, frustration with the country’s enduring poverty fails to explain how five heavily armed men could plot and execute such an attack. He speculated that the assailants may have been contract killers hired by corrupt businesspeople fearful of becoming targets of a crackdown recently threatened by Sarkisyan.

Meanwhile, one American who recently left Armenia after serving a year in Yerevan with a U.S.-funded support-for-democracy program noted that Kocharyan has emerged from the devastation more firmly in control of the country and free of the two figures most able to challenge his authority.

Sarkisyan had recently been amassing power and popularity at the president’s expense, he said, and many Armenian politicians believe Demirchyan would have defeated Kocharyan for the presidency in the last election if not for alleged widespread voting fraud.

“Kocharyan wasn’t elected under the best of circumstances, but I don’t think he’s capable of a plot like that,” said the aid official, who did not want to be identified by name. “Still, there is bound to be speculation along this line.”

Signs Gunmen May Have Expected Help

One Yerevan journalist, Nelson Aleksanyan, said he was told by a parliamentary guard that the assassins appeared panicked after gaining access to the chamber, as if they had expected support from some quarter that failed to materialize.

The gunman who took the lead in the killings had walked over to Sarkisyan and shot the prime minister at close range while shouting that the Armenian people had tired of leadership that was “drinking our blood.”

The Armenian state prosecutor’s office announced that it had launched criminal investigations against the five arrested after their morning surrender but named only three of them: Nairi Unanyan, his younger brother Karen and their uncle Vram Galstyan.

Charges of staging a terrorist act aimed at undermining authorities were being prepared, the Interfax news agency quoted officials in Yerevan as saying. If convicted, the men could be sentenced to imprisonment or even death. The death penalty has not been carried out in Armenia since the nation gained independence in 1991 during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s NTV television carried a report from its correspondent in Yerevan that included excerpts from a taped telephone conversation with Nairi Unanyan, who said in an unsteady voice that the attack was aimed solely at Sarkisyan.

“This was not a terrorist act. It was directed neither against the government, nor the president, nor the parliament,” according to the tape. “It was directed against just one man who led the government.”

Unanyan, 34, was once a member of the stridently nationalist Dashnak party in Armenia, but the party’s political leaders denied any association with the suspect and said he had been expelled in 1991 or 1992.

After funerals for the slain are held Sunday, Kocharyan will meet with national political leaders for an emergency session to choose a new government chief to replace Sarkisyan, who was Armenia’s seventh prime minister since independence.

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Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.