No police intervention

Support A1+!

Journalist for "168 Hours" Armine Avetyan and "Transparency International" representative Sona Ayvazyan were beaten up at the Malatia-Sebastia district's 8/05 polling station at around 3 p.m.

"I was standing near the window when 20 shaved-heads came in. Six of them surrounded the voting booth, while another six started pushing and beating me and Sona. Commission president Petros Avetisyan, Vice-president Khachatur Khachatryan were standing calmly and not doing anything. They held us to the wall, surrounded us and started stuffing the ballots," Armine Avetyan told "A1+".

They took Avetyan's recorder, camera and even the phone so she wouldn't call anyone.

"Police officers were standing outside, but didn't do anything."

According to the journalist, the shaved-heads could have been MP Samvel Alexanyan's men because Armine Avetyan had prohibited Alexanyan's relative from stuffing the ballots and the shaved-head had tried to bribe the journalist.

"He kept trying to invite me to eat. He told me that he would pay me money to stop me from doing my job," said Armine Avetyan, adding that she had called Samvel Alexanyan and told him what had happened. In response, Samvel Alexanyan told her that she should have called him on the spot.

MP Anahit Bakhshyan received an alarm and rushed to the polling station.

"There was a lot of commotion for some reason and it was clear that they weren't voters. I called Samvel Alexanyan and told him that this is not a good service for the president. He got frustrated and told me that he would tell those people to leave," Anahit Bakhshyan told "A1+".

"A1+" tried to find out information about the incident from proxies and observers at the polling station, but each of them gave his own explanation, saying that they had left the polling station at that moment.