Decree N 0038 was signed before finalization of election results

Speaking of the March 1 case, Head of State Investigation Service Sasoun Khachatryan made some disclosures on the top secret Decree N 0038.

The decree signed in 2008 by the then Defense Minister Mikayel Harutyunyan includes the following: “After the RA presidential election results were recognized as open and transparent by the international community, some political forces do not accept them, and try to destabilized the situation with illegal actions. Since 18:00 February 23, the whole military personnel shall be confined to barracks until a special command is received.  Officers’ groups shall be created in different subdivisions of the Central Apparatus of the RA Ministry of Defense, which should be armed with state-issued weapons.”   

It should be noted that the results of the presidential elections were not yet known at the time of signing the decree. The Central Electoral Commission summed up and published the results on February 24, one day after the decree was signed.

It means that those “some political forces” could not have accepted the results of the elections, and, for that same reason, the international community could not have recognized them as open and transparent.

In fact, the top secret military decree is merely based on an assumption, or, at the best, prediction of the future. It turns out that either the authorities were aware of the results of the elections before the CEC finalized them, or the use of the armed forces had been planned in advance.