Monday, August 3, 2020
Court Rejects Arrest Warrant For Former Yerevan Vice-Mayor
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- Vahe Nikoyan, a deputy mayor of Yerevan, Nvember 16, 2016.
A court in Yerevan on Monday refused to allow a law-enforcement agency to arrest
the city’s former deputy mayor indicted in an ongoing criminal investigation
into Ruben Hayrapetian, a wealthy businessman linked to Armenia’s former
leadership.
Earlier this year, the Special Investigative Service (SIS) accused Hayrapetian
of illegally privatizing in 2014 municipal land at a knockdown price. It claimed
that he paid only 169 million drams ($350 million) to buy, through
intermediaries, a plot worth 800 million drams.
The SIS said at the weekend that then Deputy Mayor Vahe Nikoyan arranged the
transaction through a bogus auction. It charged Nikoyan and one of his former
aides with abuse of power and forgery before asking the district court to
sanction their pre-trial arrest. The court rejected both arrest warrants.
Nikoyan denied the accusations leveled against him but declined to comment
further when contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
A member of the former ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), Nikoyan served
as deputy mayor from 2012-2018. He and Yerevan’s HHK-affiliated former Mayor
Taron Markarian resigned shortly after the 2018 “Velvet Revolution.” Nikoyan
subsequently turned down an offer to become an adviser to Hayk Marukian, the
city’s new mayor linked to Armenia’s current government.
Hayrapetian, who is also an HHK member, left Armenia for Russia in March more
than a month before being indicted in a separate inquiry conducted by the
Investigative Committee. The committee claims that the tycoon, his son and four
other persons kidnapped and repeatedly beat up in 2016 the chief manager of a
Hayrapetian-owned resort who allegedly misused more than 52 million drams
($108,000) borrowed from a commercial bank.
The tycoon rejects all charges brought against him as politically motivated. He
claims to be unable to return to Armenia because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In late May, a Yerevan court agreed to issue an arrest warrant for Hayrapetian
and four other suspects. The investigators launched an international hunt for
Hayrapetian shortly afterwards.
One of Hayrapetian’s lawyers, Amram Makinian, said last week that Russian
law-enforcement bodies have formally decided to stop hunting for him. The
decision means that he is unlikely to be extradited to Armenia.
Armenian Government May Ease Coronavirus Restrictions
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- High school graduates controversially denied admission to
universities hold an unsanctioned demonstration outside the Armenian Ministry of
Education, Yerevan, July 27, 2020.
The Armenian government said on Monday that it is considering lifting a
coronavirus-related ban on rallies while keeping in place other safety rules
imposed by it more than four months ago.
The government declared a state of emergency on March 16 after confirming the
first cases of the coronavirus in Armenia. With the virus continuing to spread
across the country, emergency rule has been extended on a monthly basis since
April.
It allows the authorities to ban all street gatherings, enforce social
distancing and hygiene rules, ban or restrict some types of business activity,
seal off local communities hit by COVID-19 outbreaks and impose a nationwide
lockdown.
The government kept the state of emergency in place even after lifting lockdown
restrictions and reopening virtually all sectors of the Armenian economy in
early May. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and other government officials have
said that it still needs the emergency powers to make Armenians wear mandatory
face masks in all public areas and follow other rules designed to contain the
epidemic.
The monthly extensions of the state of emergency are increasingly criticized by
opposition groups, however. Some of them claim that Pashinian is exploiting the
coronavirus crisis to prevent anti-government street protests. The prime
minister and his political allies deny this.
Speaking at a recent cabinet meeting, Pashinian said that the authorities should
explore alternative legal mechanisms for enforcing the coronavirus safety rules.
“We do realize that we cannot and must not endlessly extend the state of
emergency,” he said.
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian holds a news briefing on the
coronavirus ciris, July 29, 2020.
Pashinian’s spokeswoman, Mane Gevorgian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that an
interagency task force is now working on a relevant government bill.
“Working groups are continuing to work on a daily basis and I hope that we will
be able to present a final draft to the public in the coming days,” she said. “I
can assure you that nothing is going to change with regard to anti-epidemic
rules. The option of maintaining the state of emergency but lifting the ban on
rallies is under discussion.”
Gevorgian cautioned that it is still not clear whether the bill will be drafted
and sent to the Armenian parliament for approval before the state of emergency
ends on August 12. The government has yet to decide whether to extend it by
another month, she said.
The government said last week that the daily number of new coronavirus cases has
fallen considerably since mid-July after months of rapid growth. Pashinian
expressed hope that Armenia will practically overcome its coronavirus crisis
already in September.
A total of 39,102 cases have been registered in the country of about 3 million
to date.
The Armenian Ministry of Health also reported on Monday morning that 8 more
people died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the official death toll
to 762.
Another Candidate Nominated For Constitutional Court
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia -- The chairman of the Court of Cassation, Yervand Khundkarian, speaks
to RFE/RL, Yerevan, May 24, 2019.
A senior judge has been nominated by his colleagues as another candidate to
replace one of the three members of Armenia’s Constitutional Court who were
controversially dismissed in June.
The nominee, Yervand Khundkarian, has headed the Court of Cassation, the
country’s highest body of criminal and administrative justice, for the last two
years. His candidacy was backed by 145 of 195 Armenian judges who gathered and
voted in Yerevan at the weekend.
The vote resulted from constitutional changes passed by the Armenian parliament
in June. They call for the gradual resignation of seven of the Constitutional
Court’s nine justices installed before April 2018. Three of them are to resign
with immediate effect. Also, Hrayr Tovmasian must quit as court chairman but
remain a judge.
Tovmasian and the ousted judges have refused to step down, saying that their
removal is illegal and politically motivated. They have appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to have them reinstated.
Under Armenian law, the government, a general assembly of judges of all courts
and the president of the republic must each field one candidate to fill the
three high court vacancies. The parliament controlled by Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian’s My Step bloc will then vote to confirm or reject them.
The government picked its candidate on July 23. President Armen Sarkissian has
yet to name his nominee.
Some lawyers and human rights criticized the judges’ decision to choose
Khundkarian, saying that he took the bench in 2001 and must have therefore been
loyal to Armenia’s former governments. One of those lawyers, Nina Karapetian,
claimed that this fact alone runs counter to the stated purpose of judicial
reforms initiated by the current authorities.
The authorities say that their persistent efforts to get rid of Constitutional
Court members installed by the former regimes are part of the reforms. Critics
maintain, however, that Pashinian is simply seeking to take control of the court.
Armenia -- Constitutional Court Chairman Hrayr Tovmasian reads out a court
ruling, Yerevan, March 17, 2020.
Alexey Sukoyan, one of the judges who voted to nominate Khundkarian for the
Constitutional Court, defended the 47-year-old with whom he had worked in the
same court in the 2000s. “I consider him a good specialist and a very honest
person,” he said.
Sukoyan also said that Khundkarian has specialized in civil law and never dealt
with politically charges cases. “We worked in parallel with the former
authorities and were not one of their components,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian
service.
Khundkarian made headlines in 2004 when he served as an economic court judge and
ruled against the independent TV station A1+ controversially pulled off the air
in 2002. A1+ took legal action in a bid to win another broadcasting license.
The current government’s pick for the Constitutional Court, Vahram Avetisian,
has also caused controversy.
In a joint petition issued late last month, several dozen supporters of former
President Levon Ter-Petrosian and relatives of protesters killed during the 2008
post-election unrest in Yerevan urged the government to withdraw the nomination.
They said, in particular, that Avetisian’s father Davit upheld prison sentences
handed to opposition members and supporters when he served as a senior Court of
Cassation judge from 2008-2016.
Avetisian, who is a senior law professor at Yerevan State University (YSU), has
dismissed the objections to his candidacy, saying that they are fuelled by
individuals motivated by their “parochial and factional interests.”
Armenia Seeks To Offset ‘Turkish Threat’
• Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- President Armen Sarkissian (second from right) visits a
Russian-Armenian border guard post on Armenia's border with Turkey, July 4, 2020.
Armenia counts on Russia’s support in its ongoing efforts to counter a serious
threat to its national security emanating from neighboring Turkey, a senior
Armenian official said over the weekend.
Armen Grigorian, the secretary of the Armenian government’s Security Council,
reaffirmed Yerevan’s serious concerns over Turkey’s vehement support for
Azerbaijan shown during and after recent deadly clashes on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
“Seeing that Azerbaijan is unable to keep the situation under control on its
own, Turkey is trying to intervene,” Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
“I think that this poses a serious threat to the region. It is also a challenge
to the regional security architecture. The regional security architecture has
long been unchanged. Turkey is now trying to change it through its intervention.”
“We are fully prepared and will take steps to minimize this [threat.]” he said.
“We also have a lot of work to do in this direction with our strategic ally
Russia in order to prevent such changes in the region.”
Asked about Moscow’s reaction to the Armenian concerns, Grigorian said: “The
July incidents [on the border] coincided with the coronavirus pandemic, and we
have not yet been able to discuss the issue at a higher level. But these issues
are on the agenda because they are about challenges facing the region and we
need a common response to these challenges.”
Ankara has blamed Yerevan for the fighting that broke out at a western section
of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on July 12 and vowed to boost Turkish
military support for Baku. In what appears to be a related development, Turkish
and Azerbaijani troops began on July 29 joint military exercises in various
parts of Azerbaijan.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed concern at the exercises before the
Armenian military put some of its forces on high alert. Defense Minister Davit
Tonoyan said on July 28 that Armenian army units as well as a Russian-Armenian
military contingent are “continuing to constantly monitor and analyze”
Turkish-Azerbaijani military activities “with all reconnaissance means” at their
disposal.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip
Erdogan discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani flare-up during a phone conversation
on July 27. According to the Kremlin, Putin “stressed the importance of
preventing any steps that could cause an escalation in tensions.” Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov similarly urged the Turks to exercise restraint.
Russia is allied to Armenia and has thousands of troops stationed in the South
Caucasus state.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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