BEST SOVIET TRADITIONS CONTINUE

Lragir.am
04 Sept 06

This is the impression of the speech of the counsel for prosecution
Janna Kotikyan in the trial of Arman Babajanyan, the Editor-in-Chief
of the Times Yerevan.

In the first instance court of Armenia, there is one justice on the
bench, whereas Ms. Kotikyan addressed "justices", as it was accepted
in good old times, about 20 years ago. In the Republic of Armenia the
counsel for prosecution cannot prompt or propose the justice on the
sentence, whereas Ms. Kotikyan proposed sentencing Arman Babajanyan
to one year of imprisonment for avoiding military service and 4
years for forging documents, all in all, sentence him to 4.5 years
of imprisonment.

Another "Soviet manifestation". Janna Kotikyan started her speech with
the words, "the trial was compliant with all the rules of trial." But
is it one of the rules of the trial to be 30 minutes late for the
trial, like Janna Kotikyan did? Of course, in the Soviet years we had
seen a district attorney be more powerful than the judge. The counsel
for prosecution thinks the accusations for avoiding military service
and forging documents are grounded.

Whereas, Arman Babajanyan’s attorney thinks that the accusations for
stealing and forging documents are groundless. Vahe Abovyan and Armine
Arakelyan broke relations with Arman in 2002. Hence, the documents,
namely the certificate of marriage and the birth certificates should
have been stolen before 2002, whereas in 2005 the birth certificate
was used to take the child to school. Moreover, since 2002 they
had not announced that their documents could have been stolen from
their house or forged. Armine Arakelyan stated this only during the
interrogation. "The accusations against Arman Babajanyan are based
on suppositions, and the doubts are interpreted in favor of the
defendant," stated Robert Grigoryan.

The counsel for prosecution announced that it is legal to sue a person
on the grounds of an anonymous letter, and the counsel for defense
listed a number of cases provided by the NKR laws when the anonymous
letter cannot be grounds for suing.

Arman Babajanyan confessed avoiding military service. His attorney
said, "I felt protected when Arman Babajanyan avoided military service,
and if he is imprisoned, I will not feel more protected. He repents
and he is his most rigid judge. He can be corrected without insulation
from the society." Robert Grigoryan proposed dismissing the accusation
for forgery and sentence Arman Babajanyan to a punishment other than
imprisonment for avoiding military service. "Instead of sustaining
him at the expense of the government he could be helpful to the state."

In the next sitting of the court Arman Babajanyan will make his final
speech and only the verdict of Justice Mnatsakan Martirosyan will
remain to hear.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress