Axis News
Dec 14 2008

Armenian opposition hardliner may again wind up security service after
completing prison term

Vartan Malkhasyan, a prominent Armenian nationalist activist, vowed to
continue to fight for regime change in Armenia as he walked free last
week after serving a two-year prison sentence resulting from the
controversial coup charges brought against him by the Armenia’s
National Security Service.

Armenian Service of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL),
reporting on Malkhasyan’s release, notes that he and another prominent
veteran of the war in Upper Karabakh, Zhirayr Sefilyan, were arrested
in December 2006 just days after holding the founding congress of
their Alliance of Armenian Volunteers (HKH), a pressure strongly
opposed to any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. Armenia’s
National Security Service claimed they planned to mount an armed
uprising against the government ahead of the May 2007 parliamentary
elections while both men denied the charges as politically motivated.

Both Malkhasyan and Sefilyan have supported former President Levon
Ter-Petrosyan’s bid to return to power despite his well-known advocacy
of a compromise solution to the Karabakh conflict. Also last week,
Sefilyan joined several hundred people in marching to the
Prosecutor-General’s Office in Yerevan to demand the release of some
70 Ter-Petrosyan supporters arrested by the security forces in the
wake of the February presidential election, RFE/RL notes.