PROSECUTORS DEMAND JAIL TERMS FOR ‘COUP PLOTTERS’
By Karine Kalantarian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
July 30 2007

A state prosecutor demanded on Monday prison sentences of up to
three years for two arrested opposition activists and one of their
supporters accused of plotting to topple Armenia’s government.

The demand came at the latest court hearing in the politically charged
trial of Zhirayr Sefilian and Vartan Malkhasian, the two leaders of a
hard-line pressure group opposed to Armenian territorial concessions
to Azerbaijan.

The two men, both of them veterans of the Nagorno-Karabakh war,
set up the group called the Union of Armenian Volunteers (HKH) last
December to also campaign for regime change in the country. They were
arrested just days after holding its founding congress in Yerevan.

In his concluding remarks, the trial prosecutor, Artur Mkrtchian, said
Sefilian and Malkhasian must be sentenced to three and two-and-a-half
years’ imprisonment respectively for publicly calling for a "violent
overthrow of the government." He insisted that their speeches at
the HKH gathering violated a corresponding article of Armenia’s
Criminal Code.

In particular, Mkrtchian cited Malkhasian as telling hundreds
of supporters that any means of struggle against the country’s
leadership is legitimate. The prosecutor said although Sefilian made
no such explicit statements, his speech was a "logical continuation"
of Malkhasian’s.

The demanded punishment for Sefilian, a Lebanese citizen of Armenian
descent, also includes an accusation of illegal possession of a
pistol found by officers of the National Security Service (NSS)
in his Yerevan apartment. Sefilian maintains that he received it in
1998 as an official gift from Samvel Babayan, the then commander of
Nagorno-Karabakh’s army. However, the prosecutors have shown during
the trial a statement by the current Karabakh army command saying
that there are no official documents certifying this fact.

Sefilian rejects the statement as a fraud. He and Malkhasian also
strongly deny the coup charges, saying that they never plotted an
armed uprising against the government. Leaders of Armenia’s mainstream
opposition have joined them in condemning the case as a government
attempt to stifle dissent ahead of last May’s parliamentary elections
and the presidential vote due early next year.

Prosecutor Mkrtchian also demanded a three-year jail term for Vahan
Aroyan, the third defendant. The rank-and-file war veteran was detained
later in December after NSS investigators claimed to have found an
arms cache hidden in his village house in southern Armenia.

Although Aroyan was arrested as part of the same criminal case, the
prosecutors have still not clearly explained how his alleged arsenal
could have been connected to the HKH and its two leaders.