JAILED TER-PETROSIAN ALLIES CHARGED
By Karine Kalantarian and Astghik Bedevian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Feb 27 2008
At least three of the allies of former President Levon Ter-Petrosian
arrested in recent days have been remanded in pre-trial custody on a
string of criminal charges which the Armenian opposition rejects as
politically motivated.
The Armenian police said on Wednesday that the most prominent of them,
former Deputy Prosecutor-General Gagik Jahangirian, has been formally
charged with illegal arms possession and assault on "state officials
performing their duties."
Jahangirian was arrested along with his brother and two other
companions on Saturday just hours after being sacked by President
Robert Kocharian. The sacking came the day after the former chief
military prosecutor delivered a fiery speech at a Ter-Petrosian rally
in Yerevan in which he called the official results of the February
19 presidential election fraudulent and said the ex-president is the
rightful winner of the vote.
According to the police, Jahangirian and his brother Vartan resisted
arrest, compelling law-enforcement officers to use force against
them. A police statement said one of the officers accidentally fired
gunshots, lightly wounding Vartan Jahangirian and two of his comrades.
Jahangirian was visited on Tuesday in custody by Zaruhi Postanjian, a
well-known lawyer and parliament deputy affiliated with the opposition
Zharangutyun party. Speaking to RFE/RL, Postanjian condemned the case
against the controversial former prosecutor as "political persecution."
Ironically, Postanjian rose to prominence in late 2006 for helping
to secure the sensational acquittal of three Armenian soldiers
controversially accused of murdering two fellow conscripts in
Nagorno-Karabakh at a time when Jahangirian served as chief military
prosecutor. The young lawyer repeatedly accused investigators overseen
by Jahangirian of torturing her clients.
Two other prominent detainees, Smbat Ayvazian and Suren Sureniants,
are senior members of the radical opposition Hanrapetutyun party.
Both men were arrested on Sunday near Yerevan’s Liberty Square where
tens of thousands of Ter-Petrosian supporters have been demonstrating
against the official vote results for over a week. Ayvazian was charged
late Tuesday with resisting arrest, while Sureniants is prosecuted for
"organizing" the unsanctioned the rallies.
Two other jailed activists coordinated the ex-president’s election
campaign in the northwestern Shirak region. Democratic Fatherland
Party leader Petros Makeyan and Ashot Zakarian, head of the regional
chapter of the influential Yerkrapah Union of war veterans, stand
accused of obstructing the work of an election commission in the
regional capital Gyumri. Both men deny the charges, saying that they
simply protested against an instance of fraud in the polling station.
Another prominent oppositionist, Nor Zhamanakner Party leader Aram
Karapetian, is facing prosecution on charges of "false denunciation."
Aides say the accusations stem from a speech in which Karapetian
implicitly blamed President Robert Kocharian and Prime Minister
Serzh Sarkisian for the October 1999 assassinations in Armenia’s
parliament. A court in Yerevan was expected to remand the pro-Russian
politician in two-month custody later on Wednesday.
Ter-Petrosian has referred to his detained loyalists as "political
prisoners," saying that they were arrested as part of a government
effort to derail his vocal campaign for the scrapping of the official
vote results and a re-run of the presidential election.
However, Armenia’s pro-government human rights ombudsman, Armen
Harutiunian, insisted on Wednesday that the cases against the
oppositionists are not necessarily politically motivated. "Legal
mechanisms will show whether all of that was justified," he told
journalists. "I don’t think that anyone wants a wave [of appeals] to
the European Court of Human Rights. True, those individuals are mainly
from the opposition camp but that doesn’t mean those accusations are
unfounded from the legal standpoint."
Harutiunian also urged the Armenian authorities and the Ter-Petrosian
camp to embark on a political dialogue. He praised in that regard
Sarkisian’s stated readiness to form a coalition government with his
political opponents. "Intolerance and extremism has nothing to do
with democracy," he said in an apparent jibe at the radical opposition.
Meanwhile, the arrests of Ter-Petrosian supporters appear to be
continuing. Lawyers close to the ex-president said law-enforcement
bodies arrested late Tuesday two residents of the northern
Noyemberian district. One of them is the older brother of Vano
Siradeghian, Armenia’s fugitive former interior minister close to
Ter-Petrosian. Officers of the National Security Service (NSS) were
said to have detained the 73-year-old Seryozha Siradeghian after
finding an old rifle in his house in the local village of Koti. The
NSS did not immediately confirm the information.