Yerkrapah Leader Assassinated in Yerevan
Via di cavoli e di re, RFE/RL reports that a senior member of the Yerkrapah Union of Karabakh War Veterans was assassinated in broad daylight yesterday. An innocent bystander was also killed.
Witnesses told RFE/RL that Sedrak Zatikian, head of the Yerkrapah chapter in the city’s Malatia-Sebastia district, was riddled with bullets fired from an expensive vehicle that chased his Mercedes SUV in Malatia-Sebastia early in the afternoon. They said the assailants shot indiscriminately for several minutes and escaped unscathed, leaving a trail of cartridge-cases that stretched for more than 100 meters. Zatikian apparently died at the wheel moments before crashing into a heavy truck.
One of the stray bullets hit and killed a pedestrian who was later identified by police as Karine Sargsian. The 37-year-old mother of three lived in a nearby apartment building.
Some local residents said they heard gunshots not only on Thursday afternoon. “They’ve been shooting for the last three days,” said one woman.
The dead man was primarily known as a son of Vahan Zatikian, a prominent member of Yerkrapah who ran the Malatia-Sebastia district from 1996 until his sudden death in 1999. The late Zatikian also had extensive business interests in the area that were inherited by his two sons.
Sedrak and his younger earned nationwide notoriety in 2003 after being implicated in a massive gunfight with close relatives of Hakob Hakobian, another prominent Yerkrapah figure and Malatia-Sebastia businessman. The brothers hid from police for several months before making peace with Hakobian’s clan avoiding prosecution.
[…]
Malatia-Sebastia is the de facto fiefdom of Samvel Aleksanian, a parliament deputy and one of Armenia’s richest men. Aleksanian was accused two years ago of waging a bloody vendetta against the extended family of Ruben Gevorgian, another Yerkrapah figure who held sway in Yerevan’s Davitashen district.
Seems like an appropiate time to once again link to Vahan Ishkhanyan’s excellent article on how the mafia has divided up Yerevan with the tacit approval of the Armenian government. Not pleasant reading, and not least because there’s been more shooting in my area of late, including one gang killing.
RFE/RL’s full news item is here.
“The brazen fresh killings that were committed in broad daylight in Yerevan’s Malatia-Sebastia district yesterday simply came to prove that in our country the real gangsters, bandits and murderers operate with impunity,” writes “Im Iravunk.” The paper says no ordinary citizen of Armenia is now immune to falling victim to such shootings. It says Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian should pay more attention to fighting against crime and spend less time on public relations stunts such as tree planting.
“The most extraordinary thing is that the shootout occurred just 10-15 meters away from the district prosecutor’s office at Malatia-Sebastia,” says “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun.” “Which once again demonstrates that for the criminal underworld the existence of a law-enforcement system is a mere formality.”
http://www.armenialiberty.org/press/press/en/2006/06/33BC6C91-1F52-45BA-A529-ADDE97878609.ASP
Comment by Onnik — June 23, 2006 @ 7:21 pm