YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. The families of the 2008 March 1 victims have announced that they are boycotting the court proceedings which were re-opened in 2018 after the revolution.

Tigran Yegoryan, the attorney representing the next of kins of the victims, lambasted the trial at a news conference on September 7.

“Now, when the preliminary probe is basically halted in the main March 1 case, and the trial has turned into an expensive waste of time and a farce, with arbitrariness and connivance happening outside the courthouse and inside the court room aimed against the constitutionally declared values and rights and is being highly tolerated, while the presiding judge is seemingly able to only exercise his authority against the victims’ next of kins, we are suspending our physical participation in this empty event,” Yegoryan said in a statement.

He claimed that their decision won’t anyhow contribute to any given course of the proceedings.

The March 1 case is an ongoing investigation and court proceeding into the deadly 2008 post election unrest in Yerevan. 10 people, including two police officers, were killed in the clashes between security forces and protesters. Then-outgoing President Robert Kocharyan is charged with “overthrowing Constitutional order” in the case. Several other officials, notably Yuri Khachaturov – a then-high ranking military commander and Armen Gevorgyan, a former chief of the Security Council and Kocharyan’s Chief of Staff are also facing criminal charges. They all deny wrongdoing.

Reporting by Norayr Shoghikyan; Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan