Friday,
Top Russian General Visits Armenia
Armenia -- Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov (second from left), the deputy chief
of the Russian military’s General Staff, meets with Armenian Defense Minister
Vagharshak Harutiunian, Yerevan, .
A visiting top Russian general met with Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian
on Friday for the second time in five days to discuss Russia’s close military
ties with Armenia.
Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov, the deputy chief of the Russian military’s
General Staff, arrived in Yerevan on January 25 for what the Armenian Defense
Ministry described as “staff negotiations” between the armed forces of the two
allied states. Istrakov began the trip with separate meetings with Harutiunian
and his Armenian opposite number, Colonel-General Onik Gasparian.
A Defense Ministry statement released on Friday, said Istrakov met with
Harutiunian again to brief him on the results of the talks that touched upon
“all directions of Russian-Armenian bilateral military cooperation.” They
discussed joint activities planned by the two sides, the statement said without
elaborating.
The Russian ambassador in Yerevan, Sergei Kopyrkin, met with Harutiunian and
Gasparian on Thursday to congratulate them on the 29th anniversary of the
official creation of the Armenian army.
Armenia -- Senior Armenian and Russian military officials start "staff
negotiations" in Yerevan, January 25, 2021.
On Tuesday, Harutiunian inspected the main command post of a joint
Russian-Armenian system of air defense protecting Armenia’s airspace. He was
accompanied by a Russian Air Force general.
“Vagharshak Harutiunian stressed the need to deepen Russian-Armenian military
cooperation, including in the area of air defense,” said the Defense Ministry.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian similarly announced plans to deepen
Russian-Armenian relations in a televised address to the nation aired on New
Year’s Eve He said his country needs “new security guarantees” after the recent
war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia already has close political, economic and military ties with Russia. It
hosts a Russian military base and has long received Russian weapons at knockdown
prices and even for free.
Moscow deployed 2,000 peacekeeping troops to Karabakh as part of a
Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement that stopped the war on November 10. In
addition, it dispatched Russian soldiers and border guards to Armenia’s Syunik
region southwest of Karabakh to help the Armenian military defend it against
possible Azerbaijani attacks.
Court Upholds Acquittal Of Former Judge In Kocharian Case
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- District court judge Davit Grigorian leaves the courtroom after
ordering former President Robert Kocharian's release from prison, May 18, 2019.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals rejected on Friday prosecutors’ appeal against a
lower court’s decision to throw out controversial criminal charges brought
against a judge who had released former President Robert Kocharian from prison.
The judge, Davit Grigorian, presided over the ongoing trial of Kocharian and
three other former officials when it got underway in May 2019. A few days later,
Grigorian not only freed the ex-president but also suspended the trial,
questioning the legality of coup charges brought against him.
The decisions angered political allies and supporters of Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian. Heeding Pashinian’s calls, hundreds of them blocked the entrances to
court buildings across Armenia. Pashinian demanded a mandatory “vetting” of all
Armenian judges, saying that many of them remain linked to the country’s
“corrupt” former leadership.
Kocharian was arrested again in June 2019 after the Court of Appeals overturned
Grigorian’s decisions. Three weeks later, law-enforcement officers searched and
sealed the judge’s offices. A state body overseeing the Armenian judiciary then
suspended Grigorian and allowed the Special Investigative Service (SIS) to
prosecute him.
Grigorian denied the ensuing accusations of document forgery brought against him
and his secretary. He described them as government retribution for Kocharian’s
release.
Investigators denied any connection between the Kocharian case and Grigorian’s
prosecution.
In June 2020, a Yerevan court of first instance threw out the case against
Grigorian for lack of evidence even before starting the suspended judge’s trial.
The Court of Appeals upheld that decision, ruling on an appeal filed by
Armenia’s prosecutor-general. One of Grigorian’s lawyers, Georgi Melikian,
thanked it for the “principled judicial act.”
The judge who took over Kocharian’s trial later in 2019, Anna Danibekian,
repeatedly refused to release the ex-president from custody pending a verdict in
the case. In June 2020, the Court of Appeals overturned Danibekian’s decision to
deny Kocharian bail and ordered him freed.
Kocharian, who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, rejects the coup and corruption
charges leveled against him as politically motivated.
Top Judicial Official Hails Government Plans For New Judges
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- A court building in Yerevan, June 9, 2020.
The head of a state body overseeing Armenian courts backed on Friday a
government proposal to hire new judges who would deal only with corruption cases
or pre-trial arrests of criminal suspects.
A bill approved by the Armenian government earlier this month calls for the
selection of up to 21 such judges for the courts of first instance. Three other
new judges specializing in arrests or corruption-related offenses would be
appointed to the Court of Appeals.
Justice Minister Rustam Badasian said on January 14 that the new judges would
reduce the workload of courts increasingly overwhelmed by pending criminal and
civil cases. He said they should also hand down “more objective” rulings on
arrest warrants demanded by investigators.
In recent months Armenian judges have refused to allow law-enforcement bodies to
arrest dozens of opposition leaders and members as well as other anti-government
activists. Virtually all of those individuals are prosecuted in connection with
angry protests sparked by the Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s handling of the
autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian charged last month that Armenia’s judicial system has become part of a
“pseudo-elite” which is trying to topple him after the disastrous war. Ruben
Vartazarian, the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, rejected the
criticism.
Critics of the government have expressed concern over its plans to install
magistrates tasked with allowing or blocking pre-trial arrests. They claim that
the government wants to make sure that courts stop hampering politically
motivated investigations ordered by it.
The head of the Armenian Chamber of Advocates, the national bar association,
echoed those concerns when he spoke with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Given past
[court-related] events, I think that there are political considerations here,”
said Ara Zohrabian.
Vartazarian disagreed. “The [new] judges will be selected by the Supreme
Judicial Council,” he said. “It will be guided only by the law and will take
into consideration only their professional skills just like it has selected
other judges. I therefore rule out political decisions by those judges.”
Five Held Over Anti-Government Protest In Yerevan
• Artak Khulian
Armenia -- Protesters demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's resignation
clash with riot police outside the main government building in Yerevan, January
28, 2021.
Law-enforcement authorities arrested five protesters who clashed with riot
police while demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation on Thursday.
They were among several hundred people who rallied outside the main government
building in Yerevan. The demonstration was organized by several nationalist
activists holding Pashinian responsible for the outcome of the recent war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Riot police used force against the protesters when the latter tried to break
into the building that houses the prime minister’s office.
In a statement announcing the arrests on Friday, Armenia’s Investigative
Committee described the protesters’ actions as an attempt to seize the building.
The law-enforcement agency said the five detainees are suspected of violating
relevant articles of the Armenian Criminal Code. It did not identify any of them.
The organizers of Thursday’s protest are not known to be linked to a coalition
of 17 Armenian opposition groups that staged a series of anti-government
demonstrations late last year in a bid to force Pashinian to resign and hand
over power to an interim government. The prime minister has rejected the
opposition demands.
In a separate development, the National Security Service (NSS) arrested and
indicted Vahan Badasian, a prominent war veteran from Karabakh who called for
Pashinian’s ouster earlier on Thursday.
Badasian said that Pashinian will be removed from power “physically” and through
an armed revolt if he keeps refusing to step down. “Let the NSS arrest me,” he
told reporters at Yerevan’s Yerablur Military Pantheon.
The NSS said on Friday that Badasian has been formally charged with calling for
a violent overthrow of the constitutional order. A Yerevan court was due to
decide later in the day whether to allow investigators to hold him in pre-trial
detention.
Badasian’s lawyer, Arayik Papikian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that his
client rejects the accusation as politically motivated.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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