ARMENIAN COURT UPHOLDS JOURNALIST JAIL SENTENCE

Hurriyet
May 7 2010
Turkey

Armenia’s highest criminal court has upheld a prison sentence for a
newspaper editor and opposition leader for his alleged role in 2008
post election violence in Yerevan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s
Armenian Service reported Wednesday.

The Court of Cassation rejected appeals against two lower-court
rulings on the case that were filed by both Nikol Pashinian and
state prosecutors.

A Yerevan district court found Pashinian guilty on January 19 of
stirring up the March 2008 mass disturbances after the disputed
presidential election that left 10 people dead and more than 200
others injured.

It also sentenced the editor of the daily "Haykakan zhamanak" to
seven years in prison.

An appeals court upheld the ruling on March 9. However, it also ruled
Pashinian should serve only about half of the sentence in accordance
with a general amnesty declared by the authorities in June.

The Court of Cassation dismissed as "baseless" Pashinian’s lawyers’
claims that the lower-court rulings were unfair and that their client
was a victim of "political persecution."

It also rejected a separate appeal from prosecutors who had protested
the lower-court decision to clear Pashinian of an alleged assault on
a policeman during an October 2007 demonstration in Yerevan.

Defense lawyers condemned the latest court decision as politically
motivated and reaffirmed their plans to take Pashinian’s case to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.