Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Jailed Militant Slams His Former Leaders
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- Sasna Tsrer party leaders Zhirayr Sefilian (right) and Varuzhan
Avetisian (left) at a press conference in Yerevan, December 25, 2018.
A member of the armed anti-government group that seized an Armenian police base
in 2016 has blamed his former leaders for his imprisonment, saying that they
sacrificed him for the sake of their own freedom and interests.
The group called Sasna Tsrer stormed the base in Yerevan to demand that then
President Serzh Sarkisian free Zhirayr Sefilian, the arrested leader of their
wider opposition movement, and step down.
Its members took police officers and medical personnel hostage. They laid down
their weapons after a two-week standoff with Armenian security forces which left
three police officers dead.
All but two of them were released from custody shortly after Sarkisian was
toppled in the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” led by Nikol Pashinian. Sefilian was
also set free.
The two other militants remained behind bars because of facing murder charges
denied by them. One of them, Armen Bilian, was set free in February 2021 when a
Yerevan court acquitted him of killing one of the three policemen, Warrant
Officer Gagik Mkrtchian, in a high-profile trial of nine former gunmen.
Armenia -- Armen Bilian.
In December, the Court of Appeals accepted prosecutors’ demand to overturn the
acquittal and sentence Bilian to 25 years in prison. He was arrested again in
the courtroom.
The court upheld a 25-year-old prison sentence for Smbat Barseghian, a defendant
convicted of killing the two other policemen. It also rejected appeals filed by
the seven other Sasna Tsrer members whom the lower court sentenced to between 6
and 8 years in prison.
Unlike Bilian and Barseghian, they remain at large pending an appeal to the
higher Court of Cassation and its decision on the case.
In a series of statements made from his prison over the past month, Bilian not
only continued to protest his innocence but also hit out at Sefilian and
Varuzhan Avetisian, the Sasna Tsrer leader. He said they knew that he did not
kill the policeman but still helped to jail him as part of a secret deal with
the current authorities.
“They did not object to the investigators’ decision to indict me because of
being their accomplices,” Bilian claimed in his latest statement publicized last
week.
Armenia - Gagik Mkrtchian, a police officer killed in the July 2016 attack on a
police station in Yerevan.
“In 2016, Zhirayr [Sefilian] already knew who the real shooter was,” he said.
“He hasn’t done anything to clear me of the accusation. He has done everything
to ensure that I remain accused.”
Avetisian, who received a 7-year prison sentence, categorically denied the
accusations. He insisted that he and Sefilian are in opposition to Armenia’s
current government as well and could not have cut any deals with it.
“These are just baseless and ludicrous suppositions which are impossible to
answer,” read a statement issued by Avetisian late last month.
More than three years ago, Avetisian also fell out with another leading member
of Sasna Tsrer, Pavlik Manukian. The latter claimed in 2018 that the policeman
was “accidentally” shot dead not by Bilian but another gunman, Eduard Grigorian.
Armenia - A general view of Yerevan police station seized by supporters of
fringe jailed opposition leader Zhirair Sefilian, July 30, 2016.
Alec Yenigomshian, one of the organizers of 2016 demonstrations in support of
Sasna Tsrer, has added his voice to Bilian’s allegations. Yenigomshian has
accused Sefilian and Avetisian of complicity in what he sees as a murder
cover-up.
A spokesman for Armenia’s Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian insisted this week
that the murder charge leveled against Bilian was backed up by sufficient
evidence.
“If there are individuals who possess concrete evidence to the contrary not
known to the court and investigators, they can use legally defined procedures
for presenting it,” the official, Gor Abrahamian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenian Authorities Facilitate Prosecution Of Judges
• Astghik Bedevian
Armenia - Deputies from the ruling Civil Contract party attend a session of
parliament, Yerevan, February 9, 2022.
In last-minute amendments condemned by opposition lawmakers as another blow to
judicial independence, the Armenian parliament voted on Wednesday to make it
easier for law-enforcement authorities to indict and arrest judges.
The authorities need permission from the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a state
body overseeing Armenian courts, to launch such criminal proceedings. The SJC
also has the exclusive authority to take disciplinary action against judges.
Such decisions have until now had to be backed by at least seven of the SJC’s
ten members. Under a bill pushed through the National Assembly by its
pro-government majority, five members will be enough to give the green light to
punishing judges accused of various violations.
Amendments lowering this threshold were not included in the initial version of
the bill approved by the parliament in the first reading last month. They were
unexpectedly added shortly before its passage in the second and final reading on
Wednesday.
Opposition parliamentarians deplored this fact. They also said Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s administration will use the amendments to step up pressure on
independent-minded judges reluctant to execute government orders.
Artsvik Minasian, a senior deputy from the main opposition Hayastan alliance,
argued that five members of the SJC were installed by the current and previous
parliaments controlled by Pashinian. The other members were chosen by an
assembly of the country’s judges.
Armenia - The Supreme Judicial Council holds a hearing in Yerevan, July 26, 2021.
Vladimir Vartanian, a co-author of the bill representing the ruling Civil
Contract party, dismissed the opposition concerns. He claimed that the main
purpose of the legislation is to make sure that judges do not commit abuses when
multiple vacant seats in the SJC are not filled on time.
The controversial bill was passed two days after an Armenian judge was arrested
on charges stemming from a recent decision which he made during an ongoing trial
presided over by him.
The judge, Boris Bakhshiyan, has said that he is prosecuted in retaliation for
granting bail to a jailed opposition figure late last month. The leadership of
Armenia’s Union of Judges has also decried Bakhshiyan’s arrest.
In recent months, Armenian opposition groups, lawyers and some judges have
accused Pashinian’s government of seeking to increase government influence on
Armenian courts under the guise of judicial reforms. The authorities deny this,
insisting that the reforms are aimed at increasing judicial independence.
In a joint statement issued last month, a group of judges charged that the
authorities want to curb judicial independence through disciplinary proceedings
against them and their colleagues. The number of such proceedings increased
significantly last year after a new bill empowered the Armenian Ministry of
Justice to demand disciplinary action against judges by the SJC.
Armenia -- A courtroom in Yerevan.
There are also growing concerns about the effective suspension of a computerized
system of random assignment of all cases to judges. The system using special
software was designed to minimize government and law-enforcement officials’
influence on judicial acts.
Last summer, Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) confiscated the computer
carrying the software in what it called a criminal investigation into the
integrity of the automated selection of judges. The NSS has still not returned
the software, allowing court chairpersons to continue to assign court cases at
will.
Opposition figures and lawyers say the authorities are thus able to pick judges,
who rarely reject arrest warrants sought by prosecutors, for handling
politically motivated cases.
Opposition Mayor To Remain In Jail Despite Election Win
• Marine Khachatrian
Armenia - Goris Mayor Arush Arushanian.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals refused to release the arrested mayor of the
southeastern town of Goris and surrounding villages on Wednesday nearly four
months after his opposition bloc’s victory in a local election.
The 30-year-old mayor, Arush Arushanian, is one of the four heads of major
communities of Syunik province who were arrested shortly after the June 2021
parliamentary elections on various charges rejected by them as politically
motivated.
They all demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation before joining
the main opposition Hayastan alliance formed by former President Robert
Kocharian in the run-up to the snap polls.
Arushanian stands accused of trying to buy votes. Law-enforcement authorities
claim that he ordered the head of a village close to Goris to provide financial
aid to local residents who will promise to vote for Hayastan.
Arushanian strongly denies that, saying that the poverty benefits approved by
the local council were allocated on a regular basis and had nothing to do with
the general elections.
The criminal case against him is based on incriminating testimony given by the
village chief, Lusine Avetian. The latter reportedly withdrew her testimony
during their trial that began in November.
A Syunik judge presiding over the trial refused to free Arushanian on bail. The
Court of Appeals upheld the decision following an appeal lodged by his lawyers.
Armenia - Former President Robert Kocharian speaks at an election campaign rally
held by his Hayastan alliance in Kapan, administrative center of Syunik
province, June 7, 2021.
Two of the three other jailed Syunik community heads, who were elected to the
Armenian parliament on the Hayastan ticket, were set free in December after the
Constitutional Court deemed their arrest illegal.
The third community chief, Manvel Paramazian, was freed in October only to be
arrested again on Monday after the Court of Appeals overturned a Syunik court’s
decision to grant him bail. Incidentally, the judge who made that decision was
also arrested on Monday on charges which he rejects as government retribution.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Rubik Mkhitarian, a Court of Appeals judge, assured
defense lawyers that the controversial arrest of his colleague will not
influence his decision on whether or not Arushanian should remain in detention.
The hearing took place as dozens of opposition activists and lawyers critical of
the Armenian government gathered outside the court building in Yerevan in a show
of solidarity with Arushanian. They insisted that he is a political prisoner.
The government and prosecutors deny any political motives.
A bloc led by Arushanian defeated Pashinian’s Civil Contract party by a wide
margin in a municipal election held on October 17 three months after the Goris
mayor’s arrest.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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