RFE/RL Armenian Report – 08/02/2017

                                        Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Jailed Oppositionist Goes On Trial


 . Sisak Gabrielian


Armenia - Opposition activist Andrias Ghukasian goes on trial in
Yerevan, 2Aug2017.

The trial began on Wednesday of an Armenian opposition activist
accused of aiding gunmen that seized a police station in Yerevan last
year to demand President Serzh Sarkisian's resignation.

The arrested activist, Andrias Ghukasian, was one of the organizers of
demonstrations held in support of the gunmen affiliated with a fringe
opposition group. The charges levelled against him stem from one of
those rallies that was organized on July 29, 2016 in Yerevan's Sari
Tagh neighborhood close to the besieged police base.

Riot police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the protesters
after they refused to march back to the city center. Several
organizers of the protest were arrested and charged with provoking
"mass disturbances." All of them except Ghukasian were subsequently
released from custody.

Armenia's Special Investigative Service (SIS) claims that Ghukasian
urged supporters to throw stones at the police officers in Sari
Tagh. The 47-year-old also stands accused of planning to have the
protesters break through a police cordon, join the gunmen and thus
prolong their standoff with security forces, which left three police
officers dead.

Ghukasian denies the accusations as politically motivated. His lawyers
say that they are based on false testimony given by a man linked to
the police. They say the testimony runs counter to videos of the July
2016 protests featuring Ghukasian.

Ghukasian has also accused SIS investigators of committing numerous
violations of the due process during their nearly yearlong criminal
inquiry. At the opening session of his trial, the presiding judge did
not allow to read out a statement detailing the alleged violations.

The judge went on to adjourn the hearing, citing the absence of the
oppositionist's lawyers. He said the trial will resume after they
return from vacation.


Armenia - Riot police disperse protesters in Yerevan's Sari Tagh
neighborhood, 29Jul2016.
Two other opposition activists arrested in connection with the Sari
Tagh violence, Davit Sanasarian and Davit Hovannisian, also attended
the first court hearing that lasted for only several minutes. Both men
decried the criminal case against their comrade. Hovannisian, who was
freed on bail in June, claimed that the Sari Tagh crowd could have
easily broken through the police cordon had the protest organizers
indeed planned to join the gunmen.

More than 60 protesters were injured and hospitalized in the Sari Tagh
violence. The police say that 36 of their officers were injured by
stones thrown from the crowd shortly before the violent breakup of the
protest.

In a January report, Human Rights Watch said that the use of force
against the protesters was "excessive and disproportionate." The
crackdown has also been criticized by Armenian human rights activists.

A former business executive, Ghukasian was a maverick candidate in
Armenia's last presidential election held in 2013. He garnered about
0.6 percent of the vote, according to the official election results.

Despite being held in pre-trial detention, Ghukasian ran in the April
2 parliamentary elections as a candidate of the opposition ORO
alliance led by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian and former
Foreign Ministers Raffi Hovannisian and Vartan Oskanian. ORO polled
only 2 percent of the vote, falling well short of a 7 percent
threshold for having seats in Armenia's current parliament.



Armenian Village Shooting `Linked To Money'


 . Anush Muradian


Armenia - Forensic experts inspect a dining hall in the village of
Shamiram where four men were killed and seven others wounded,
1Aug2017.

A mass shooting in an Armenian village, which left four people dead,
was the result of an unpaid debt, a leader of Armenia's Yazidi
community claimed on Wednesday.

The killings were committed in Shamiram, a Yazidi-populated village 50
kilometers west of Yerevan, on Tuesday during a gathering of several
hundred local men marking a religious feast. Four of them were shot
dead and seven others wounded by a gunman who fled the scene.

The Armenian police identified the presumed shooter as Telman
Kalashian, a 50-year resident of another village. Kalashian remained
on the run as of Wednesday evening.

Aziz Tamoyan, who leads the largest organization of Armenia's ethnic
Yazidis, attributed the carnage to $100,000 which he said was long
owed to Kalashian. In his words, Kalashian shouted that "I won't shoot
you if you give me my money" moments before opening fire. Three of the
four murdered men were related to each other, said Tamoyan, who
visited Shamiram earlier in the day.

"I know that Telman's father very well," Tamoyan told RFE/RL's
Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "He is a kind and good person, a
wonderful individual. I can't understand why that guy took such an
action."

Meanwhile, the mayor of Kalashian's village of Miasnikian said that
the fugitive suspect is a herdsman who was not known for violent
conduct. "He is a normal working man who has raised livestock," Tigran
Baghdasarian told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "He has a
wife, three daughters and one son."

The mayor also said that the homes of the Kalashians and their
relatives were placed under police guard shortly after the shootings.



Russia To Suspend Gas Supplies To Armenia


Russia -- A logo of the Russian Gazprom company during the 16th
Neftegaz International Exhibition in Moscow, April 18, 2016

Supplies of Russian natural gas to Armenia will be suspended on
Thursday due to capital repairs on a pipeline in Russia, the Armenian
national gas distribution network announced on Wednesday.

The Gazprom-Armenia operator said they will resume 30 days later,
after the completion of "construction works" at a North Caucasus
section of the pipeline transporting Russian gas to Armenia via
Georgia. Gas supplies to individual and corporate consumers will
continue "without limitations" in the meantime, it added in a short
statement.

The company owned by Russia's Gazprom energy giant will presumably tap
its massive underground gas storage facilities north of Yerevan during
that period. It might also use additional volumes of natural gas which
Armenia imports from neighboring Iran.

Armenia already asked Iran to supply it with much more natural gas
during a similar month-long suspension of gas imports from Russia last
summer. A Georgian section of the pipeline underwent major repairs at
the time.

Armenia has imported up to 500 million cubic meters of Iranian gas
annually ever since it built in 2008 a gas pipeline connecting it to
the Islamic Republic. By comparison, Russian gas supplies to the South
Caucasus country total around 2 billion cubic meters.

With Armenia paying for Iranian gas with electricity, Iran is due to
at least triple the gas supplies after the construction of a third
power transmission line connecting the two states. Work on the $120
million line is slated for completion in 2019.

Natural gas generates more than one-third of Armenia's electricity. It
is also used, in liquefied or pressurized forms, by most car owners in
the country.



Press Review



Panorama.am reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin's press
secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has expressed concern over reports that the
United States is considering supplying weapons to Ukraine. "The
Kremlin believes that countries aspiring to a role in the resolution
of the conflict in Ukraine must avoid actions that could provoke a new
period of tension in Donbass," Peskov said. The online publication
finds this argument disingenuous. It points out that Russia itself has
sold weapons to Azerbaijan despite being a mediator in the
Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

"The sales of Russian weapons to Azerbaijan are the main reason for a
transformation of Russian-Armenian relations," writes Lragir.am. It
says that not only Armenia's government and opposition forces but even
the parents of soldiers serving in the Armenian army criticize Russian
arms sales to Baku. It also argues that neither the United States nor
France, the two other co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, has signed
major arms deals with Azerbaijan.

"Aravot reports on President Serzh Sarkisian's statement that
unspecified "experts" are now looking into the possibility of
supplying Iranian natural gas to Europe via Armenia. Artyom Tonoyan,
an expert on Iranian affairs, tells the paper that Yerevan has already
made clear before that it would welcome such an ambitious project. He
suggests that the project is still far from being implemented due to
"technical issues" such as the small capacity of the existing pipeline
in Armenia transporting Iranian gas and the high cost of delivering
that gas from Georgia to Europe via the Black Sea. "Generally
speaking, the area of energy is at the center of Armenian-Iranian
relations and is one of the most dynamically developing directions,"
he says, pointing to the ongoing construction of a third
Armenian-Iranian electricity transmission line.

(Tigran Avetisian)


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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