During the hearings in the National Assembly, the Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Committee, Artur Nahapetyan, referred to the ECHR’s decision on September 18, 2025, in the “March 1” case, as well as the ongoing preliminary investigation into that case.
“It has been recorded that the deaths that occurred during the mass protests in Yerevan in 2008 were the result of the use of disproportionate force by the police. The Court also noted that the deaths of four people killed by gunshots were the result of a poorly planned and poorly executed operation, during which inappropriate measures for crowd control and disproportionate use of lethal force were used.
The use of force could be justified in certain circumstances under the Convention, including for the purpose of suppressing riots and uprisings. However, the firing of 1,405 units of 5.45 mm flares to intimidate and disperse the protesters, as stated in government documents, was completely disproportionate. Such indiscriminate and arbitrary use of highly lethal weapons is unacceptable, especially considering the volume of non-lethal weapons used, only 280 blank cartridges and 191 rubber bullets,” he said.
According to the head of the committee, the preliminary investigation substantiated that on the evening of March 1, 2008, RA Armed Forces units were already deployed on Leo, Paronyan, and other streets of Yerevan, which used firearms, mainly shooting into the air, and in some cases also at the upper floors and roofs of buildings. To conceal this circumstance and exclude the participation of the Armed Forces, the officers of the police forces and other units gave false and misleading statements, alleging that they had fired with combat firearms.
According to him, the service members of the Armed Forces who fired live ammunition were not questioned, their actions were not assessed, since the investigation initially attributed the shooting to individual service members of the police forces, which did not correspond to reality. “In this regard, evidentiary and procedural actions are being carried out to give a legal assessment to the actions of the officials involved in the process,” he said.
