‘THERE’S NO JUSTICE IN THIS COUNTRY,’ SAYS ARMENIA’S FORMER FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER

Tert.am
17:17 ~U 21.01.10

There’s a certain malicious, negative approach that’s emphasized
toward Pashinyan, which played a role in sentencing him, said Armenian
National Congress representative and former Minister of Foreign
Affairs Alexander Arzumanyan, speaking at a press conference today
and referring to Pashinyan’s sentence of seven years imprisonment.

"Justice is completely absent in this country. There’s no court and
[option] to speak about what crossed Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan’s mind
in this specific case, that he added a year [to Pashinyan’s sentence],
I don’t know, [one] must ask those who gave him the order.

Mnatsakan’s motivation doesn’t really interest me; what interest me,
and you, as journalists must be interested in, is the motivation of
the individual who gave him the instruction… as for the instruction
being given out at the highest level, that’s obvious," he said.

"This government is prepared for everything. The experience of all
of our former political prisoners who are now free shows that the
authorities were doing everything in order to keep them behind bars if
only for another day. Remember that mockery of a story about amnesty
that was referred to for months at a time and delayed till the knife
reaches the bone," said the former foreign affairs minister.

For Arzumanyan, it’s difficult to "get into the crevices of the
minds" of immoral individuals and "to get inside their psychology"
and understand their motives, since he hasn’t been raised that way,
and he finds that "strange way of thinking" and "hostile sources"
to be incomprehensible.

"For that reason, don’t ask me questions about what this or that
chief is thinking; I haven’t been a part of the chiefdom, I’m not a
chief and I can’t understand," said Arzumanyan.