ADVOCATE OF SUKIASIANS APPLIES TO ARMENIAN PRESIDENT WITH REQUEST TO PROTECT HIS PROFESSIONAL RIGHTS
Noyan Tapan
Feb 26, 2010
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 26, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Ara Zohrabian,
advocate of businessmen Khachatur and Saribek Sukiasians, applied to
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and all high-ranking officials of the
country with the request to prevent attempts by the investigation body
to interfere in his activity as an advocate. In his application, the
advocate asked the prosecutor general of Armenia and the prosecutor of
Yerevan’s Erebuni and Nubarashen administrative regions to invalidate
the decision on seizure (concerning the decision’s part on seizure of
a computer) taken on 23 February 2010 by Senior Lieutenant H. Deleyan,
an investigator of the Erebuni investigation unit of the RA police. It
was said in the application that the indicated decision was to be
invalidated in view of Article 13 of the European Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and Article 290
of the RA Criminal Procedure Code.
According to the advocate, the investigator had intended to seize the
computer in order to check the fact of drawing up a legal document
related to the person empowered to act for advocate Ara Zohrabian. By
Ara Zohrabian’s consent, the respective file in that computer was
examined (incuding the chronology of its creation) and then printed
and sent to the investigator. The advocate Ara Zohrabian gave the
investigator only the printer and declined to provide the computer
(processor), explaining that the computer contains information
considered as advocatory secret – in view of Principle 22 the UN Basic
Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Article 21 of the RA Law on Legal
Acts, and Article 25 of the RA Law on Advocacy.
The investigator seized the printer, while the processor has not
been seized yet because the advocate A. Zohrabian did not give it,
but there is a real threat of its forced seizure.
It should be mentioned that the seized file is related to the criminal
case opened against Saribek Sukiasian, Khachatur Sukiasian’s brother.