awake
Arutyunian stood for hours in the day's hot sun, wearing a heavy leather coat and was overheard muttering and cursing to himself as he waited for President Bush and President Saakashvili to speak. When President Bush began speaking, Arutyunian threw a Soviet-made RGD-5 hand grenade, wrapped in a red plaid handkerchief, in the direction of the podium where President Bush was speaking to the crowd in Freedom Square in downtown Tbilisi. The grenade landed 18.6 metres (61 ft) from the podium, near which Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, his wife Sandra E. Roelofs, Laura Bush, and other officials were seated. Fortunately, the grenade failed to detonate despite the fact that it was a live grenade. The grenade struck a girl in the crowd. Apparently the red handkerchief was wrapped around the grenade, preventing detonation. A Georgian security officer quickly removed the grenade, and Arutyunian fled.Bush and Saakashvili did not learn of the incident until after the rally.
The capture of Arutyunian is like something out of CSI. Georgian authorities issued photos of an unidentified suspect and announced a reward of 150,000 Lari (USD $80,000) for information leading to the suspect's identification. At the request of the Georgian government, the FBI was called in to investigate the incident. In one picture of the crowd, the FBI noted a man in the bleachers with a large camera. He was a visiting professor from Boise, Idaho. FBI agents contacted him and, with his photographs, were able to identify a suspect. Acting on a tip from a hotline, police raided Arutyunian's home where he lived alone with his mother on 20 July 2005. During an ensuing gunfight, Arutyunian killed the head of the Interior Ministry's counterintelligence department, Zurab Kvlividze. He then fled into the woods in the village of Vashlijvari on the outskirts of Tbilisi. After being wounded in the leg, he was captured by Georgian Special Forces. His DNA matched the DNA samples from the handkerchief. Georgian police later found a chemical lab and a stockpile of explosives Arutyunian had built up with "enough dangerous substances to carry out several terrorist acts."
Arutyunian pled not guilty and refused to answer questions in court. He was found guilty at trial and on January 11, 2006 a Georgian court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the attempted assassination of George Bush and Mikheil Saakashvili, and the killing of the Officer Kvlividze. In September 2005, a United States Federal Grand Jury also indicted Arutyunian, and could ask to extradite him if he is ever released.
