Armen Martirosyan, director of “Antares” Holding told new details to Aravot.am regarding being apprehended by police in Turkish two days ago. He and 3 other civilians from Armenia were taken to the police station for taking a video and photo of the city of Van. “Last year, we knew that there was an earthquake in Van, and when we saw the empty domiks (translator’s note: little house) in the territory, we were surprised at what a short period of time, Turkey was able to resettle homeless citizens. I wanted to take a photo of the new houses, and we thought that what we are taking, are newly build buildings, it turned out that they were painted a month ago.
When Mher Arshakyan was taking pictures, a red car drove close, a man came out of the car, showed police certificate, ordered not to move, and asked why we were taking photos. We have said that you could recover the disaster area only in a few months, and we wanted to show that we cannot recover Gyumri during 25 years. The police officer immediately called the police, half an hour later, people from the department fighting against terrorism came by the car, on which they are probably transporting terrorists, started to search us as if we were terrorists. Then some more people came from the police, from the military police. We were taken to the Gendarmerie.
Before taking u there, we did not know what will happen whether we are searched, and there is something that has appeared in our bag. It was an atmosphere of fear, and we did not know what was going on and why they were searching for, because photo and video taking was not banned anywhere,”-told Mr. Martirosyan.
According to him, they could only read the word terrorist on the cars, and in Gendarmerie they glanced at the word captive. “We saw representatives of different nations arrested. We were told that we were arrested, but they are checking up. It is not that they offended us at the Gendarmerie, besides waiting in the sun for 4 hours, and a number of searches. Here, they took our cell phones, computers, IPads, passports, everything. But there was a respectful attitude towards us, they treated us to tea, continuously talked to us, asking various questions, including questions that had no connection with the problem. For example, they were asking how much salary a police officer in Armenia receives. Our friends were asked how much their salary is.
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I was not asked such questions, I was telling about Erebuni museum, Urartu period, they were discussing historical issues with me, or asking what Antares is, what books I have published.”
Mr. Martirosyan said that later, according to the procedures, they were taken to the hospital for a medical examination to establish whether they suffered injuries in the meantime. And on the way, when the citizens of Armenia demanded passports, it turned out that the police officers had left them behind at the Gendarmerie. Later, the passports and searched items taken from them were returned unscathed, and the police officers took us to Van and allowed taking photos.
Arpine SIMONYAN
