SEFILYAN IS TREATED AS A FUTURE OFFICIAL
Lragir, Armenia
Dec 13 2006
Information leaks from different places, including the National
Security Service that Jirair Sefilyan, who was arrested on December
9, will be deported. Armen Aghayan, a member of the Civic Action for
Defense of Liberated Territories, stated December 13 at the Friday Club
that deportation is possible but they are making efforts to prevent it.
"In other words, I want to say that this fuss is not needed, whatever
was necessary to prevent Jirair Sefilyan’s deportation, we made every
effort, and I suppose that this was one of the reasons why he was not
deported, but it is possible that they had planned this from the very
beginning," Armen Aghayan says. He says Sefilyan does not have problems
in Lebanon despite the information in some media. Simply his Lebanese
passport has expired, and he does not have an Armenian passport,
and he may have trouble going to Lebanon via other countries. Armen
Aghayan also announces that Sefilyan’s lawyer tried to use the
circumstance that Jirair Sefilyan’s wife is the assistant of the
Lebanese ambassador, and Sefilyan is a member of a diplomat’s family
and is protected by the convention on diplomatic immunity.
According to Armen Aghayan, this was an extreme step, and the lawyer
resorte to it to prevent deportation. In reality, Sefilyan is not
related to all this, he says, adding that Jirair Sefilyan was a citizen
of Armenia even when everyone in Armenia was citizen of the USSR.
"Jirair Sefilyan has lived in Armenia for 16 years, and for most of the
time he was an officer of the Armenian army. When we were citizens of
the USSR, he was a citizen of Armenia in Beirut, because as a young
man he solved the problem of security of the Armenian quarter of
Beirut. Therefore, it is funny that he is not a citizen of Armenia,"
says Armen Aghayan. He says he does not know if the scenario of
deportation of Vahagn Chakhalyan will be applied to Jirair Sefilyan.
"It is possible that they are drafting a similar scenario, fully
or partly similar. Naturally we must be watchful and prevent this
scenario and have Jirair Sefilyan released as soon as possible,"
Armen Aghayan says. As to the present state of Jirair Sefilyan and
the treatment at the isolation ward of the National Security Service,
Armen Aghayan says they get information through the lawyer. The
information they have got so far are not worrying.
"They treat Jirair Sefilyan as a future high-ranking official of
Armenia. They are very correct, as they know it is quite possible
that tomorrow Jirair Sefilyan may have a higher position than all
the officers of the National Security Service together," Armen
Aghayan says. He says, however, that they tried to humiliate Jirair
Sefilyan at the time of the arrest when he was having dinner with
his schoolmate, the director of Vivacell Ralf Yeirikyan. They put
handcuffs to Yeirikyan but he was released in a few minutes.
"There is much of a show in this process. You know that there were
interrogations and searching. Our apartment was also searched, and
I assure you that the National Security was not looking for anything
particular in our apartment. They came to have a good time," says Armen
Aghayan. According to him, the government was trying to show that they
had exposed a very important case, and wanted to use it for propaganda.