Tuesday,
Indicted Businessman Seeks Medical Treatment Abroad
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - Businessman Samvel Mayrapetian at the official opening of his
Toyota-Yerevan car dealership in Yerevan, 23 June 2009.
A prominent Armenian businessman prosecuted on corruption charges has appealed
to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after law-enforcement authorities
in Yerevan refused to allow him to undergo medical treatment abroad.
The millionaire businessman, Samvel Mayrapetian, was arrested and charged with
“assisting in bribery” in October. Armenia’s Special Investigative Service
(SIS) has still not publicized details of the accusations. The tycoon had
greatly benefited from close ties with the country’s former governments.
An Armenian court freed Mayrapetian on bail on December 27. He has remained in
a Yerevan hospital since then.
Immediately after his release Mayrapetian requested the SIS’s permission to
leave for Germany for health reasons. The law-enforcement body refused to
return his passport.
Mayrapetian’s lawyers responded by asking the ECHR on January 2 to order the
Armenian authorities to allow his treatment in a German clinic.
The lawyers said on Monday that the Strasbourg court has accepted the lawsuit
and asked the Armenian Justice Ministry to explain the investigators’ refusal
to let the suspect leave the country. A ministry spokesperson confirmed the
information on Tuesday.
One of the lawyers, Karen Batikian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that his
client is suffering from a life-threatening form of pancreatitis that requires
urgent surgery. He insisted that Armenian hospitals lack modern equipment
needed for such an operation.
“His life is really in very serious danger,” said Batikian. “We have documents
signed by doctors certifying that this disease cannot be cured in Armenia.”
Batikian said later in the day that the SIS has handed the passport back to
Mayrapetian but made clear that he will still not be allowed to fly to Germany.
Mayrapetian is one of Armenia’s leading real estate developers who also owns a
national TV channel and a car dealership. His company was involved in a
controversial redevelopment of old districts in downtown Yerevan during the
1998-2008 rule of former President Robert Kocharian. Some media outlets for
years linked Kocharian’s elder son Sedrak to the Toyota dealership.
Kocharian is currently held in pretrial detention, having been charged in
connection with the deadly breakup of post-election opposition protests in
March 2008. He denies the accusations as politically motivated.
Armenian, Azeri FMs Set For More Talks
U.S. - Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov (R) of Azerbaijan and Zohrab
Mnatsakanian (second from right) of Armenia pose for a photograph with the OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs in New York, 26 September 2018.
International mediators are trying to organize another meeting of Armenia’s and
Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers later this month, the Armenian Foreign Ministry
said on Tuesday.
“The [U.S., Russian and French] co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have proposed
a meeting of the foreign ministers in January,” the ministry spokeswoman, Anna
Naghdalian, told the Armenpress news agency. “An announcement on the meeting
will be made in a coordinated manner.”
Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar
Mammadyarov held three face-to-face meetings in the second half of 2018.
According to the co-chairs, at their most recent talks held in Milan on
December 5 Mnatsakanian and Mammadyarov pledged to “work intensively to promote
a peaceful resolution of the conflict and to further reduce tensions.”
“They agreed to meet again in early 2019 under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk
Group Co-Chairs for this purpose and in order to facilitate high-level talks,”
the mediating troika said in a December 6 statement.
Both ministers described the Milan meeting as “useful.” Mammadyarov said that
it resulted in a rare “mutual understanding” between the two parties to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The ministers met in the Italian city the day before Armenian Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke to each other at a
summit of ex-Soviet states held in Russia.
Pashinian and Aliyev also had a brief conversation during the previous CIS
summit held in Tajikistan in September. There has been a significant decrease
in ceasefire violations in the Karabakh conflict zone since then.
“The year 2019 will give a new impetus to the Armenia-Azerbaijan
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process,” Aliyev wrote on his Twitter page
on December 14.
Pashinian tweeted two hours later that a Karabakh settlement “remains a top
priority” for Armenia.
Court Approves Fresh Arrest Warrant Over 2008 Crackdown
• Anush Muradian
Armenia- Vahagn Harutyunian, the former head of a criminal investigation into
the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.
A Yerevan court has approved a fresh arrest warrant against the man who led a
criminal investigation into the 2008 post-election violence in Armenia during
former President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule.
The former official, Vahagn Harutiunian, was charged in late October with
forging factual evidence to cover up the Armenian army’s involvement in the
deadly breakup of opposition protests staged in the wake of a disputed
presidential election. He left Armenia for Russia in July, ostensibly to
receive medical treatment, and apparently remains there.
On November 2, a court of first instance in the Armenian capital allowed the
Special Investigative Service (SIS) to arrest Harutiunian pending
investigation. The Court of Appeals annulled the arrest warrant on December 13,
however.
Shortly afterwards, Harutiunian was also charged with two counts of abuse of
power. According to an SIS spokeswoman, Marina Ohanjanian, the district court
again sanctioned the former SIS investigator’s arrest on December 30.
Harutiunian rejected the initial accusation leveled against him as “unfounded,
illegal and fabricated” when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian service by phone on
November 1. He insisted that his team of investigators never found any evidence
of illegal actions taken by the Armenian military during the 2008 unrest, which
left eight protesters and two police servicemen dead.
The SIS completely changed the official version of events following last
spring’s mass protests that toppled Sarkisian. It now says that Sarkisian’s
outgoing predecessor, Robert Kocharian, illegally ordered army units into the
streets of Yerevan before declaring a state of emergency on March 1, 2008.
Kocharian was arrested on December 7 on charges of overthrowing Armenia’s
constitutional order. The former president denies them, saying that Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinian is waging a political “vendetta” against him.
Pashinian was a key speaker at the 2008 protests. The former journalist
subsequently spent about two years in prison for organizing what the SIS used
to describe as “mass disturbances.” He strongly denied those charges.
New Parliament Majority ‘Wary’ Of Opposition Party
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - Gevorg Gorgisian (L) and other election candidates of the Bright
Armenia party campaign in Yerevan, November 26, 2018.
An opposition politician claimed on Tuesday that Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s government is too scared to cede a leadership position in Armenia’s
newly elected parliament to his party.
Pashinian’s My Step alliance named the incoming speaker of the National
Assembly and two of his three deputies ten days after winning the December 9
parliamentary elections by a landslide.
The Armenian constitution reserves the third post of deputy speaker for a
representative of the parliamentary opposition. It will therefore be given to
one of the two other political parties that have entered the new parliament:
Prosperous Armenia (BHK) and Bright Armenia. They will have 26 and 18
parliament seats respectively.
Pashinian indicated on Monday that My Step lawmakers will likely vote for a
candidate of the BHK because the latter is the second largest parliamentary
force.
Gevorg Gorgisian, a senior Bright Armenia lawmaker, dismissed Pashinian’s
explanation. “It’s a political decision, and I think it’s wrong to cover it up
with different wording,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “They should just
come out and openly say that they have decided to gift that post to the BHK.”
Gorgisian insisted that his party will be a “strong opposition” with or without
controlling the post of vice-speaker. “Maybe they are scared of further
strengthening Bright Armenia by giving it [power] levers,” he said of the
parliament majority.
Bright Armenia, Pashinian’s Civil Contract party and another party made up the
Yelk alliance that was in opposition to the country’s former government.
Pashinian toppled it in May after weeks of mass protests organized by him.
Bright Armenia declined to join the protest movement.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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