August 9, 2006


Another Assassination

Citing Newsarmenia.ru, PanArmenian.net reports that another assassination has taken place in Armenia. Interestingly, this time the victim was the head of a Children’s Rights NGO although I daresay the reasons for the killing had something to do with business. They nearly always do.

Head of Organization for Children’s Rights Protection Killed in Armenia

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Well-known entrepreneur, head of the Organization for Children’s Rights Protection Alexander Givoyev was killed on Ashtarak-Gyumri highway in Armenia. Upon receiving an alarm on shooting the policemen found Givoyev’s body with wounds. It was found out that the entrepreneur with his family was heading for Gyumri in his own car. When he stopped at a shop and got off the car an unknown fired on him out of a red VAZ-2199 car. Givoyev died immediately. Shop assistant Gyulnara Karapetyan also died from wounds. A criminal case was initiated and an investigation started, reported Newsarmenia.ru.

The last high-profile assassination took place in Yerevan towards the end of June. Then, as in this case, an innocent bystander was also killed. Anyway, maybe we’ll learn more later.

Posted by Onnik @ 2:47 pm. Filed under: Armenia, Children, Caucasus, Crime




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  1. RFE/RL has more on the latest assassination in Armenia. Givoyev sounds weird to say the least, and it’s interesting to note that figures believed to have links with crime also establish NGOs in Armenia.

    Aleksandr Givoev, 53, was gunned down on Tuesday at a roadside market on a major highway where he reportedly stopped to buy fruit while driving his family to the northern city of Gyumri. An innocent woman who sold agricultural produce there was also killed by a stray bullet fired from what police described as a stolen car used by the gunmen.

    A spokesman for the Prosecutor-General’s Office said the car was found completely burned about 10 kilometers from the scene shortly after the shooting. She said law-enforcement officials immediately launched a criminal investigation but have made no arrests yet.

    A father of seven, Givoev was officially known in recent years as the head of a non-governmental organization campaigning for the protection of children’s rights. He claimed to have helped to baptize more than 8,000 children from socially vulnerable families since the group’s creation in 2000.

    Givoev, notorious for his flamboyant behavior and statements, unsuccessfully ran for parliament in the May 2003 elections. A campaign booklet released in the run-up to the vote carried pictures of Givoev surrounded by children. Curiously, he was also pictured, apparently in Paris, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, a famous French movie star. The booklet claimed that “the people” have bestowed on Givoev, an ethnic Assyrian, the title of Godfather of All Armenians.

    Givoev spent much of the past three decades in Russia, developing a controversial reputation there. In 2001, the Armenian newspaper “Iravunk” reprinted a Russian press report that listed him among Russia’s leading crime figures of Caucasian descent. The businessman reacted furiously to the information, urging President Robert Kocharian to close the paper.

    Givoev was last spotted by journalists in early May as he tried to board a plane at Yerevan airport that carried relatives of the Armenian Airbus A-320, which crashed off the Russian Black Sea cost, to the site of the disaster. He said one of the crash victims, also a reputed crime figure, was a close friend of his.

    In addition, Givoev, who also sponsored the Armenian women’s weightlifting team, was seen wearing an army general’s uniform during the April 24 commemoration in Yerevan of the 91st anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Seyran Shahsuvarian insisted on Wednesday that he has never served in Armenia’s military, police or any other security structure.

    Comment by Onnik — August 10, 2006 @ 12:17 am

  2. Blogian has more on Givoyev’s assassination here, while one Armenian newspaper weighs in with its own take on the unprecdented rise in contract killings that have occured since the 2003 parliamentary and presidential elections.

    “Armenia is becoming Sicily,” “Azg” writes, reporting on the latest contract killings in Armenia. “News of yet another brutal killing has come to prove we do not, after all, lag behind the criminal capitals of the world. As it turns out, a senior police official was not quite right to assert that a rise in the crime rate here mainly resulted from petty social crimes.”

    Comment by Onnik — August 10, 2006 @ 9:46 pm

  3. Lragir also has more.

    ANOTHER INNOCENT CITIZEN WAS KILLED

    The criminal is raging in Armenia, and another citizen of the Republic of Armenia became victim. On August 8 another incident happened in the Republic of Armenia. On the Yerevan-Gyumri road, some people in a VAZ 2109 car shot Alexander Givoyev, businessman, the chair of the Committee for Children’s Rights, and killed him. The shooting took place when Givoyev stopped at the roadside to do shopping. And perhaps the loss of Givoyev would not be that great for the public if it did not cause the death of another innocent person, Gyulnara Karapetyan, who was selling products at the stand.

    If Givoyev were killed in another place, nothing would happen to the women. Like in the incident in Malatia, Yerevan. But for the native criminal, it is not a problem to kill Givoyev and others. The problem is to do it with the public watching to create an atmosphere of public psychosis. Therefore, they shoot in front of the stand, in a busy part of the street to show to the public that they are the strongest. And this means that there is no government in Armenia to protect its citizens from the bullets of the criminal gang, the citizens who think they live in their “homeland”, where their home, their birthplace is.

    Moreover, the government itself seeks for the support of the criminal, rounds up the criminal under the same roof, in the hall of the government, and vows a victory, vows that the first fruits will be produced in three or four months. Obviously, the fruits appeared earlier, in three or four weeks. And one can only imagine what will happen in three or four months.

    HAKOB BADALYAN

    Comment by Onnik — August 10, 2006 @ 10:42 pm

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