The body of 19-year-old Alik Manukyan, a conscript, was laid to rest in Areni village yesterday. He died of a gunshot wound on July 18 at around 2:00 pm in Ijevan military unit N.
He died on the way to the hospital.
Alik Manukyan was the only son of his parents. He was drafted from the Vayots Dzor military commissariat. He has been in the service for more than a year. He should have been demobilized in half a year.
We managed to get in touch with Alik Manukyan’s cousin Vazgen. He told Forrights.am that his brother was injured under the jaw.
“The mother spoke to him half an hour before the incident. “Nothing is clear about what happened next, an investigation is underway,” said the deceased’s cousin.
He said that Alik’s relatives learned about Alik’s death from their friend. “Our friend called and said that there was an incident with Alik. Then I called the military unit and they said there was an incident, but it lookեդ like suicide.” In other words, did they have already decided in the military unit that it was a suicide? “I do not know, I cannot say,” ռեպլիեդ Vazgen Manukyan.
We got in touch with Alik Manukyan’s mother, Lilit Sargsyan, with great difficulty. It turns out that investigators confiscated the phones of the dead soldier’s parents. “They said they should confiscate it. I was told that my phone was taken to Yerevan,” said Lilit.
She talked to her son for 13.57 minutes. According to the investigation committee, Alik Manukyan received the gunshot wound at 2:00 pm, that is, 3 minutes after talking to his mother.
“It was a very noisy place. He said, “Mom, it’s noisy, I’ll call you later.” We called after a while; he was “unavailable”. We checked with “side means” and found out that my son had died; we were not told by the military unit, we checked by “side means”. When the child was unavailable, we started calling various acquaintances. I have talked to him also in the morning. He was OK. He was uneasy only at that moment.”
After the death of her son, she analyzed many circumstances and swears that if the case is not solved, she “will enter from Yeghegnadzor military commissariat and get out from Ijevan and Pashinyan, but will find out the truth.”
“I will find out what happened. My child would not commit suicide. He was afraid of even a little blood. From the first day of service, he said, “Mom, tell them not to give an automatic weapon tome.” He wanted a service that would not hold a weapon. He did not like weapons, he graduated from Monte Melkonyan College and had medals. “We transferred him to a tank unit a few months ago so that he would not hold an automatic rifle. He was on a tank,” tells Lilit Sargsyan.
She assures that the boy would never kill himself, he was very afraid of blood. Alik’s medals disappeared after his death. His cell phone has also disappeared.
“They stole [the telephone] so that not much would be found out through that phone. If my child killed himself, where is my child’s phone? They called me and said that Alik’s phone was not found. Was it a needle and was so easily lost? They took my son’s phone to close the case. But they can’t. “
She assures that the circumstances of her son’s death are very dark. It is not the disappearance of medals and telephone that lead the soldier’s mother to this thought. On the first day of the incident, the discussions of the villagers were overheard. She heard that Alik had been shot twice. “Then they said, ‘No, it’s a shot.’ I have not seen it myself. My baby’s collar was buttoned. It did not show well! I was by his side all the time, I wanted to see where he was injured. I noticed that his eye was swollen. ”
“My son wanted a lot of money from us, he would call and say, ‘I need money at this time, then at this time.’ Send five thousand drams, send 7,000 drams, I’ve sent 60,000 in one month – Lilit remembers – I sent the money quickly; I was afraid that something would be done to him there. “Probably, they wanted again, he did not tell me. Probably, he did not give any money, and they did something to my son.”
Syuzan Simonyan