EUROPEAN COURT REJECTS JAILED ARMENIAN SCHOLAR’S APPEAL
Armenia Liberty (RFE)
Nov 20 2009
Armenia — Murad Bojolian, a scholar and former government official,
pictured during his trial in 2002.
20.11.2009 Ruzanna Stepanian
The European Court of Human Rights has thrown out an appeal from
an Armenian scholar and former diplomat serving a ten-year prison
sentence given to him for alleged espionage in favor of Turkey,
it emerged on Friday.
Murad Bojolian, now 59, was arrested and charged with passing
"military, economic and political information" on to Turkish
intelligence in January 2002. He was tried and convicted of high
treason less than a year later.
Bojolian initially admitted to working for the Turkish intelligence
service MIT, but later retracted the pre-trial testimony and pleaded
not guilty to the charges. The former head of the Turkey desk at the
Armenian Foreign Ministry claimed during his two-month trial that
he fabricated the confession because he feared torture and wanted to
ensure the safety of his wife and three children.
Bojolian, who made occasional freelance contributions to Turkish media
after leaving the government in the late 1990s, lodged an appeal to
the European Court of Human Rights in 2003, saying that he was jailed
for his journalistic activities and never had access to state secrets.
He said the ten-year sentence which he received in December 2002
violated an article of the European Convention on Human Rights that
guarantees freedom of expression.
According to his lawyer, Arayik Ghazarian, the Strasbourg-based
court refused to even take up the case and hand down a ruling on the
case on the grounds that any cooperation with foreign intelligences
constitutes espionage even if it does not involve state secrets.
Ghazarian told RFE/RL that the decision was made on November 3 and
communicated to him and the Bojolian family on Friday.
Bojolian’s daughter, Alina, criticized it as unfair. "It was never
proved in the court or anywhere else that Murad Bojolian cooperated
with the intelligence services of any country," she told RFE/RL.
"We haven’t decided yet what to do, but we will continue our struggle,"
she said. "We will do everything to achieve justice."
In his initial pre-trial testimony, Bojolian, who was born and grew
up in Turkey, claimed to have passed a broad range of information
about Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh on to Turkish intelligence agents
in exchange for money. The testimony contained detailed accounts of
his alleged contacts with MIT during six different trips to Istanbul
between 2000 and 2001.
Although the defendant retracted the "false confession" during his
trial, Armenian courts found it credible. One of the trial prosecutors
said that its detailed descriptions "complement each other in a
logical manner." and "could not have been fabricated even with the
best imagination." The defendant and his lawyers, for their part,
insisted that Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) failed to
come up with any other purported evidence of his crime.
In a lengthy speech delivered during his 2002 trial, Bojolian said
that he played a pivotal role in establishing direct communication
between the governments of Turkey and newly independent Armenia in the
fall of 1992. He said that made him the object of envy and jealousy
of his Foreign Ministry superiors whom he accused of spreading rumors
in 1992 and 1993 about his links with Turkish intelligence.
He said then Foreign Minister Vahan Papazian, a key member of former
President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s administration, told him to resign
or risk criminal proceedings. Papazian denied that, however, telling
RFE/RL in October 2002 that he fired Bojolian because the latter was
combining diplomatic work with retail trade in Turkish goods.
After leaving the Foreign Ministry Bojolian worked as a part-time
translator and specialist on Turkey in Ter-Petrosian’s staff. His
name is currently on the list of about two dozen jailed individuals
whom Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress regards as political
prisoners.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress