Peter Lukimson, Israel. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
The Israeli Foreign Ministry finally begins to worry about a resident of the Arab town of Tyre, 28, who is imprisoned in a Yerevan prison for a fight with a local taxi driver.
All details of the incident are known from hearsay of relatives of the young man and have to be checked. They say that the young Israeli Arab and several other Israeli citizens took a taxi to a Yerevan night clubs to celebrate their graduation. When it was time to pay, young people thought that a driver overcharged them by a couple of dollars. They began to sort things out, it turned into a fight during which a side mirror of the cab was broken.
Tyre’s resident says that finally he paid for the broken mirror to the driver and decided that it was an end of the episode. However, the young man faced a group of taxi drivers. A fight began again, one of drivers was injured by a knife or a glass bottle.
Participants of the fight were arrested by the Yerevan police, but soon all Israeli citizens were set free, except for Tyre’s resident. The family of the young Arab states that the Armenian mafia frightens him, demanding buoying-out.
Usually the special department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry deals with such problems, but in recent weeks its employees are striking and not working. Only this week “as an exception” they decided to consider “the Armenian incident.” The problem is that unlike in Baku or Tbilisi, there is no Israeli embassy in Yerevan, only the honorary consul represents interests of the Jewish state there.
At the same time, there are diplomatic contacts between the countries and they have already been used.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry doesn’t exclude that the Armenian law-enforcement agencies have reasons for arresting the Israeli citizen, and in this case Israeli diplomats will do their best for his rights are followed appropriately.
