A Yerevan court has authorised the exhumation of the remains of 43-year-old Poghos Poghosyan, who died in 2001 after a violent incident at a popular café involving the security detail of then-President Robert Kocharyan.
Judge Karen Farkhoyan approved the prosecution’s motion, arguing that a fresh forensic examination could reveal evidence of deliberate violence. Prosecutor Tsovak Mnatsakanyan told the court: ‘We may have a significantly different picture, and the expected result is that bone fractures may be found.’
The fatal altercation occurred at the Aragast café – known locally as Poplavok – shortly after Kocharyan and his entourage left the venue. According to the original investigation, Poghosyan, an ethnic Armenian from Georgia’s southern Javakheti region, greeted the president in Russian, saying ‘Privet [hello] Rob’, in what was described as an overly familiar manner, prompting a confrontation. Prosecutors said he fell in the restroom during the scuffle and struck his head on the floor.
Hermine Virabian
Only one member of Kocharyan’s security team, Aghamal Harutyunyan (nicknamed ‘Kuku’), was prosecuted. In 2002 he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and received a two-year suspended sentence. The verdict was widely condemned by Poghosyan’s relatives and human-rights groups as a political cover-up.
The case was reopened after Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution, amid renewed scrutiny of the former president, who has since faced separate charges of corruption and abuse of power — allegations he rejects as politically motivated. British national Steven Newton, a witness at the café that night, repeated his earlier claims that several presidential bodyguards had beaten Poghosyan, prompting prosecutors to re-classify the death as a possible murder.
The court will now request authorisation from Georgian authorities to proceed with the exhumation, as Poghosyan was buried in Javakheti. Defence lawyers have criticised the move as symbolic, arguing that ‘twenty-four years later, exhumation cannot bring new truth’.
