Talin Incident Victim Speaks

While attempts are afoot to downplay any accusations of wrongdoing during the beating of a heckler at a recent pre-election campaign meeting by Levon Ter-Petrossian in Talin, ArmeniaNow reports on the victim. Interestingly, according to the article, those that beat Sargis Karapetyan maintain that they didn’t despite video footage clearly showing quite the opposite.

The 53-year-old Karabakh war veteran told media at the Pakagits media club on Thursday that during a campaign rally of the ex-president in Talin on January 27 he saw banners proclaiming that “Talin is with Levon Ter-Petrosyan” and wished to come forward and voice his opinion.

However, he says, bodyguards clad in black and wearing sunglasses did not allow him, which prompted him to say out loud: “Mr. Ter-Petrosyan, they lied to you. Neither the Talin area nor the whole Armenian people is with you.”

[…]

The footage of the scuffle was shown on public television the same day. However, according to Karapetyan, the pro-Ter-Petrosyan press added more insult to injury by publishing slanderous materials about him. For example, Haykakan Zhamanak wrote that Karapetyan’s son was among those who beat him.

“How could my son hit me? My son came to my rescue together with his friend, took me out. It is the handwriting of the HHSh [former ruling Armenian Pan-National Movement] to discredit people and sling mud on them,” he says showing a copy of Haykakan Zhamanak.

[…]

Four members of Ter-Petrosyan’s campaign office in Talin were arrested. On Thursday the four released a statement saying that Karapetian was only “led away from the site of the meeting” by people furious with his “disrespectful remarks.”