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ARMENIA: FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ARRESTED FOR HAYRIKIAN ATTACK
EurasiaNet.org, NY
March 6 2013
March 6, 2013 - 9:37am, by Giorgi Lomsadze
Italian novelist Umberto Eco would have no trouble transforming
the turmoil over Armenia's February 18 presidential election into a
fantasy thriller complete with secret societies, mystical forces and
evil home repairmen.
In a fresh subplot in the ongoing Armenia-elects-a-president drama,
one presidential candidate has now been accused of plotting to
assassinate another. Meanwhile, a more ordinary stand-off between
the two main characters -- the official winner and the runner-up --
continues apace over whether or not the election results were rigged.
On March 5, Vardan Sedrakian, a mythologist, occultist and failed
presidential hopeful, was arrested and charged with conspiring to
kill candidate Paruyr Hayrikian, who survived a shooting attack two
weeks before the election.
Sedrakian, who predicted his own arrest (albeit erring by about a
week), says it was not him; it was the Freemasons.
Prosecutors have not commented further.
Finding the basis for this claim could prove an uphill struggle. But
there is one connection to masonry: two of the alleged attackers on
Hayrikian reportedly remodeled mythologist Sedrakian's summer house.
Then, everyone knows, Sedrakian claimed, that Raffi Hovhannisian
is a representative of California's Freemasons. So, add two and two
together, he advised, and, of course, American Freemasons would try to
kill a candidate about whom only 1.23 percent of Armenian voters care.
Hayrikian says he has never met Sedrakian and thinks the allegations
are strange.
And this from a man who might warrant inclusion in an Eco novel
himself; a Soviet-era dissident who did time in Siberia and claims
to have survived six prior assassination attempts (including one
supposedly involving a poisonous snake), he has blamed Russia's
security services and terrorists for the January 31 assault against
him.
Meanwhile, on Armenia' center stage, a more mundane drama unfolds. At
a March 5 rally of hundreds in downtown Yerevan, Raffi Hovhannisian
criticized international observers for accepting President-Elect Serzh
Sargsyan as the election winner, and said that he would continue
touring around Armenia to raise support for his "Hello Revolution"
("Barevolution").
But today, the secondary characters seem to have stolen the main show.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66646
EurasiaNet.org, NY
March 6 2013
March 6, 2013 - 9:37am, by Giorgi Lomsadze
Italian novelist Umberto Eco would have no trouble transforming
the turmoil over Armenia's February 18 presidential election into a
fantasy thriller complete with secret societies, mystical forces and
evil home repairmen.
In a fresh subplot in the ongoing Armenia-elects-a-president drama,
one presidential candidate has now been accused of plotting to
assassinate another. Meanwhile, a more ordinary stand-off between
the two main characters -- the official winner and the runner-up --
continues apace over whether or not the election results were rigged.
On March 5, Vardan Sedrakian, a mythologist, occultist and failed
presidential hopeful, was arrested and charged with conspiring to
kill candidate Paruyr Hayrikian, who survived a shooting attack two
weeks before the election.
Sedrakian, who predicted his own arrest (albeit erring by about a
week), says it was not him; it was the Freemasons.
Prosecutors have not commented further.
Finding the basis for this claim could prove an uphill struggle. But
there is one connection to masonry: two of the alleged attackers on
Hayrikian reportedly remodeled mythologist Sedrakian's summer house.
Then, everyone knows, Sedrakian claimed, that Raffi Hovhannisian
is a representative of California's Freemasons. So, add two and two
together, he advised, and, of course, American Freemasons would try to
kill a candidate about whom only 1.23 percent of Armenian voters care.
Hayrikian says he has never met Sedrakian and thinks the allegations
are strange.
And this from a man who might warrant inclusion in an Eco novel
himself; a Soviet-era dissident who did time in Siberia and claims
to have survived six prior assassination attempts (including one
supposedly involving a poisonous snake), he has blamed Russia's
security services and terrorists for the January 31 assault against
him.
Meanwhile, on Armenia' center stage, a more mundane drama unfolds. At
a March 5 rally of hundreds in downtown Yerevan, Raffi Hovhannisian
criticized international observers for accepting President-Elect Serzh
Sargsyan as the election winner, and said that he would continue
touring around Armenia to raise support for his "Hello Revolution"
("Barevolution").
But today, the secondary characters seem to have stolen the main show.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66646