Five gunmen who burst into the National Assembly and sprayed it with bullets on October 27, 1999, killing its speaker Karen Demirchian, Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisian and six other officials. The gunmen led by an obscure former journalist, Nairi Hunanian, accused the Armenian government of corruption and misrule and demanded regime change.
They surrendered to police after overnight negotiations with then President Robert Kocharian. They were subsequently tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Hunanian insisted during his and his henchmen’s marathon trial that he himself had decided to seize the parliament without anybody's orders.
Nevertheless, some relatives and supporters of the assassinated officials still suspect Kocharian and his successor President Serzh Sarkisian (no relation to Vazgen), who was Armenia’s national security minister in October 1999, of masterminding the killings to eliminate powerful rivals. Both men repeatedly dismissed such suggestions during and after a serious political crisis caused by the killings.
In 2004, investigators formally stopped looking for other individuals possibly involved in the attack, citing a lack of evidence. Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General overturned that decision in 2019.
In a statement released on Friday, the office acknowledged that nobody has been indicted in the renewed investigation. But it stressed that the probe is still not over, saying that investigators are continuing to conduct forensic tests and examine documents as well as audios and videos relating to the case.
They have also interrogated about a dozen individuals, added the statement timed to coincide with the 24th anniversary of the shootings. It did not name them.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pledged to find and punish “organizers” of the killings when he campaigned for the 2021 parliamentary elections. He pointed the finger at Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian, claiming that Armenian security services had been aware that Hunanian and his men will carry out the attack. The investigators have not publicly backed up Pashinian’s claim.