Vladimir Arutunyan looks from the defendant's cage during his trial in Tbilisi, January 11, 2006.
Posted on 01/11/2006 10:19:42 AM PST by West Coast Conservative
A man who tried to blow up U.S. President George W. Bush with a grenade in the former Soviet state of Georgia last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday, a court said.
Vladimir Arutunyan, a Tbilisi resident, threw the grenade at Bush while the president was addressing a crowd in the main square of the Georgian capital last May.
U.S. officials said at the time the grenade, which landed within 50 meters of Bush, failed to explode because of a malfunction.
Arutunyan confessed to the crime but later retracted his confession. His lawyer Liza Japaridze said he would appeal.
The security scare marred Bush's trip to Georgia, intended to show U.S. support for the government that came to power after the "Rose Revolution" of 2003.
I'd just as soon hang the bastard, but I guess life in prison is better than what I thought he'd get...
Good for Georgia!
Thanks goodness he was tried in a foreign country. The mutt would have been treated as a hero over here.
Probably wishes he had tried this in the U.S. Attempting to kill a conservative President does not get you life. Remember Hinckley?
good...hopefully life in prison means what it says.
I sure hope ham is regularily served
He is Armenian.
This guy is nuts. When the trial started he claimed that his civil rights were being violated...and protested by sewing HIS OWN MOUTH SHUT. That's certifiable.
For what it's worth, Georgia doesn't have a death penalty so this is the strongest sentence he could get. Since he ALSO murdered the head of one of Georgia's law enforcement units when they tried to arrest him, I'm guessing that he'll never see the light of day again.
"I'd just as soon hang the bastard, but I guess life in prison is better than what I thought he'd get..."
Especially life in Georgian prison.
Looks like a muslim lunatic.
Armenians are Orthodox Christians not Muslims.
He's Armenian but in Georgia, which borders Turkey btw. Georgia is about 10% Muslim. We'd need to know more to conclude which he is, if anything.
And those Muslims are not Armenians but Adjarians, Azers and Pinkasi Geroge Chechens.
Who for all we know could have convinced him to convert, or kidnapped and brainwashed him (would explain his sewing his mouth shut).
The evidence simply isn't there.
Not all of them. That guy has islamoloonie written all over his face.
Vladimir Arutinian (his surname is also transliterated as Arutyunian) (b. 12 March 1978, Tbilisi, Georgia) is a man convicted of an assassination attempt against U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit in Georgia on May 10, 2005.
An ethnic Armenian, he was born and grew up in Tbilisi, Georgia. He is suspected of throwing a RGD-5 hand grenade at a podium where George W. Bush and Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili were addressing to a massive crowd at the Freedom Square in downtown Tbilisi on May 10, 2005. The live grenade landed less than 100 feet (31 meters) from the podium but did not explode.
Georgian officials had initially claimed the grenade was not set to explode, and U.S. officials initially said that Bush had been in no danger, but they later said the grenade was a threat to his life. On July 18, Georgia’s Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili issued photos of a suspect, whose identities by that time were unknown, and announced a reward of 150,000 Lari (USD$83,000) for information leading to the identification of that person.
The suspect, Vladimir Arutinian, age 27, was arrested in a shootout with police late on July 20. During the skirmish a high-ranked police officer was killed, and the suspect fled into the woods in the village of Vashlijvari on the outskirts of Tbilisi. Wounded in the leg, he was captured by the Special Forces about an hour later. He made an admission in the hospital, where he was being treated for gunshot wounds.
If that's true....just damn. The mental image applied to numerous RATS is very satisfying though.
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