Tuesday, 

Appeals Court Upholds Guilty Verdict Against Babayan


 . Karlen Aslanian


Armenia - Samvel Babayan, a retired army general critical of the
government, attends an appeals court hearing in Yerevan, 26 February
2018.

Armenia's Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a six-year prison
sentence handed down to Samvel Babayan, a retired army general
prosecuted on charges of illegal arms acquisition and money laundering
which he strongly denies.

It also rejected the appeals of two other suspects in the high-profile
case who were sentenced by a district court in Yerevan to three and
two years in prison in November.

Babayan was arrested in March 2017 after Armenia's National Security
Service (NSS) claimed to have confiscated a surface-to-air rocket
system. The arrest came about two weeks before Armenia's last
parliamentary elections. Babayan was unofficially affiliated with the
ORO alliance led by former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian and two
other opposition politicians. ORO condemned the criminal case as
politically motivated.

Babayan has since repeatedly denied prosecutors' claims that he
promised to pay other defendants, notably his longtime associate
Sanasar Gabrielian, $50,000 for the delivery of the shoulder-fired
Igla rocket.

Gabrielian, who received the three-year prison sentence, insisted
during their trial that it was he who commissioned the confiscated
Igla. He claimed that he wanted to donate it to Nagorno-Karabakh's
army.

Both defendants appealed against the guilty verdict handed down by the
lower court. They and the third suspect, Armen Poghosian, said they
must be acquitted on all counts.


Armenia - The Court of Appeals hands down a verdict on the appeals of
Samvel Babayan and two other men accused of illegal arms acquisition,
.

"This is a fabricated case," Babayan told the Court of Appeals on
Monday. He reiterated that he only advised Gabrielian to hoard the
sophisticated weapon in a remote Karabakh village and then
confidentially tip off a military official in Stepanakert.

A trial prosecutor insisted, for his part, that the investigators have
substantiated their accusations levelled against Babayan and the other
defendants. Purported evidence presented by them includes a short
segment of a wiretapped telephone conversation between Babayan and
Gabrielian.

Babayan said that his secretly recorded remarks were "taken out of
context." He earlier petitioned the court to have the prosecutors
publicize full audio of the phone call. The court refused to do that.

Babayan, 52, led Karabakh's Armenian-backed army from 1993-1999 and
was widely regarded as the unrecognized republic's most powerful man
at that time. He was arrested in 2000 and subsequently sentenced to 14
years in prison for allegedly masterminding a botched attempt on the
life of the then Karabakh president, Arkady Ghukasian. He was set free
in 2004.

Babayan criticized the current authorities in Yerevan and Stepanakert
after returning to Armenia in May 2016 from Russia where he lived for
five years.



Armenian Parliament To Debate 2008 Crackdown On Opposition


 . Tatevik Lazarian


Armenia - A man walks past burned cars on a street in Yerevan where
security forces clashed with opposition protesters, 2 March 2008.

The National Assembly agreed on Tuesday to debate an
opposition-drafted resolution condemning the use of lethal force
against opposition protesters in Yerevan in the wake of Armenia's
disputed 2008 presidential election.

The parliamentary resolution put forward by the opposition Yelk says
that supporters of opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian protested
against "the falsification" of the results of the election that
formalized the handover of power from outgoing President Robert
Kocharian to Serzh Sarkisian.

It describes as "crude and illegal" the forcible dispersal of those
protests on March 1-2 2008 which left ten people dead. The statement
demands that law-enforcement authorities at last identify and
prosecute those responsible for the killings.

The parliament unanimously voted to include the draft resolution on
its agenda even though its standing committee on legal affairs gave a
formal negative assessment of the document last week. Gevorg
Kostanian, the incoming committee chairman affiliated with the ruling
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), criticized the Yelk motion.


Armenia - Opposition leader Nikol Pashinian addresses protesters that
barricaded themselves in central Yerevan, 1 March 2008.

Addressing fellow lawmakers before Tuesday's vote, Yelk's
parliamentary leader, Nikol Pashinian, again blamed the authorities
for what was the worst street violence in Armenia's history. "Ten
years ago the police illegally used force against citizens fighting
protesting against the falsification of the presidential elections, as
a result of which ten people were killed in the center of Yerevan," he
said.

"Serzh Sarkisian managed to seize power only thanks to those
killings," charged the outspoken politician who played a major role in
Ter-Petrosian's 2007-2008 opposition movement.

HHK lawmakers rejected such claims during parliamentary hearings on
the unrest that were chaired by Pashinian earlier this
week. Significantly, one of those lawmakers, Samvel Nikoyan, blamed
not only Ter-Petrosian but also Kocharian for the bloodshed. Nikoyan
disputed Kocharian's March 2008 claim that some of the protesters shot
at security forces.


Armenia - Armenian army soldiers are deployed on a street in Yerevan
where security forces clashed with opposition protesters, 2 March
2008.

Ter-Petrosian, who had served as Armenia's first president from
1991-1998, was the main opposition candidate in the February 2008
presidential ballot. He rejected as fraudulent official vote results
that gave victory to Sarkisian.

Many Ter-Petrosian supporters took to the streets to demand a re-run
of the vote. Thousands of them barricaded themselves in downtown
Yerevan on March 1, 2008 after riot police broke up nonstop
demonstrations organized by Ter-Petrosian and his allies in the city's
Liberty Square.

Eight protesters and two police servicemen were killed as security
forces tried to forcibly end that protest as well. Ter-Petrosian urged
his supporters to disperse early on March 2, 2008 shortly after
Kocharian declared a state of emergency and ordered Armenian army
units into the capital.

Dozens of opposition figures, including Pashinian, were subsequently
arrested and prosecuted. The parliamentary statement proposed by Yelk
also demands that Armenian prosecutors review those "fabricated"
criminal cases.



New Body To Oversee Armenian Judiciary


 . Astghik Bedevian


Armenia - A district court building in Yerevan, 27Jun2017.

The Armenian parliament will elect on Wednesday five of the ten
members of a new and powerful body tasked with overseeing Armenia's
courts.

The remaining members of the Supreme Judicial Council will be chosen
by the country's judges who took the bench at least ten years ago.

The council is being set up in accordance with sweeping constitutional
changes enacted in 2015. According to one of those amendments, its
main mission is to "guarantee the independence of the courts and the
judges."

The council will nominate virtually all new judges that will be
appointed by the Armenian president and the National Assembly. It is
also empowered to take disciplinary action against judges or have them
terminated altogether.

The parliament discussed on Tuesday the five members of the council
proposed by the ruling Republican Party (HHK) and its junior coalition
partner, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Dashnaktsutyun). Lawmakers will vote for or against them in secret
ballot.

The candidates, among them Gagik Harutiunian, the outgoing chairman of
Armenia's Constitutional Court, will have to be backed by at least 63
members of the 105-seat parliament in order to get elected to the
judicial body. The HHK and Dashnaktsutyun control 65 parliament seats.

The two other political groups represented in the legislature chose
not to nominate any candidates. Instead, deputies representing the
opposition Yelk bloc put tough questions to the five candidates on the
parliament floor. In particular, Harutiunian was asked about the
existence of political prisoners and opposition allegations of
electoral fraud that have always been dismissed by the Constitutional
Court.

"I won't confirm or deny [the existence of political prisoners] for
the following reason: I have not looked into any criminal case of this
kind," said Harutiunian.

Yelk's parliamentary leader, Nikol Pashinian, hit out at the
long-serving Constitutional Court chief after the question-and-answer
session. "The guy was vice-president, prime minister and
Constitutional Court chairman # but doesn't know if there have been
political prisoners in Armenia," he said. "This is his relationship to
the truth."

Pashinian also attacked another candidate, former Justice Minister
Gevorg Danielian. He said that Armenian jails were "full of political
prisoners" during Danielian's tenure.

HHK parliamentarians rejected the criticism. "Nobody can call into
question their [professional] qualities that are needed for their
tenure at the Supreme Judicial Council," one of them, former
Prosecutor-General Gevorg Kostanian, said during the debate.

Incidentally, another candidate nominated by the ruling party, Liparit
Melikjanian, ran for the parliament on the Yelk ticket as recently as
one year ago. He accused the Armenian authorities of pursuing
"anti-national policies" during the election campaign.

"I may sympathize with the Yelk bloc in terms of political views but I
think that my political career is over now," Melikjanian said on
Tuesday.

Armenian courts have long been notorious for their lack of
independence from the executive branch. They are still mistrusted by
many citizens despite having undergone frequent structural changes in
the last two decades. Corruption among judges is thought to be another
serious problem.



Sarkisian Encouraged By Faster Economic Growth


Armenia - President Serzh Sarkisian meets with Prime Minister Karen
Karapetian and other senior officials in Yerevan, .

President Serzh Sarkisian hailed on Tuesday robust economic growth
recorded in Armenia last year, while acknowledging that it did not
have a serious impact on living standards.

Sarkisian said the Armenian economy expanded by at least 7.4 percent
in 2017 as het met with Prime Minister Karen Karapetian and other
senior officials to discuss the socioeconomic situation in the
country.

"This is certainly a good indicator," he said. "But we must also bear
in mind that one year of strong economic growth cannot have an impact
on broad sections of our society."

The rapid growth, the president went on, should continue unabated for
two or three more years before its positive effects can be felt by
most Armenians. He noted in that regard that the Armenian government
achieved "good economic indicators" in January as well.

The Finance Ministry made a more modest growth projection last month:
6.7 percent. It had originally forecast a 3.2 percent growth rate. It
revised that target upwards to 4.3 percent in September.

Armenia's National Statistical Service (NSS) has yet to report an
official growth figure for 2017. So far it has released only detailed
separate data on the performance of different sectors of the
economy. In particular, Armenian industrial output rose by over 12
percent, according to the NSS.

In its five-year policy program approved by the parliament last June,
Karapetian's cabinet pledged to ensure that the domestic economy grows
by around 5 percent annually. Sarkisian announced on Tuesday that his
administration will finalize "within several weeks" a 12-year
"strategy for Armenia's socioeconomic development." A statement on the
meeting released by the presidential press service gave no details of
that strategy.

Sarkisian will complete his second and final presidential term on
April 9. He is widely expected to become prime minister and thus
extend his decade-long rule.



Press Review



"Zhoghovurd" reports that the Armenian government is determined to
complete a controversial reform of the national pension system that
triggered street demonstrations in Yerevan in 2014. It will become
mandatory in July for all Armenian workers self-employed individuals
born after 1973. The paper is critical of the new pension system,
saying that it should not be introduced in Armenia because average
wages there are quite low. It says that a higher pension tax envisaged
by the reform will only cut those wages in real terms.

"Zhamanak" says that hardly anyone was surprised by Gagik Tsarukian's
decision to endorse President Serzh Sarkisian's pick for the next head
of state, former Prime Minister Armen Sarkissian. The paper links this
decision to what it sees as a "profound transformation of the
government system in Armenia." Tsarukian is keen to adapt to this
ongoing change, it says.

"Building a party and making it a success in Armenia is a very
difficult task," writes "Hraparak." "Especially if that party does not
make use of government resources its chances of electoral success
become slim # and the likelihood of splits within it greatly
increases. That explains why the history of non-governing parties in
Armenia has been one of volatility and upheavals. Such parties fail to
achieve important results because financial resources and public
platforms mainly serve pro-government forces."

Karapet Rubinian, an opposition figure who has served as deputy
speaker of the Armenian parliament in the past, tells "Aravot" that
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's latest statements on "historic
Azerbaijani lands" in Armenia may be a prelude to renewed fighting in
Nagorno-Karabakh. Rubinian also speculates that Aliyev's decision to
bring Azerbaijan's next presidential election forward by six months is
apparently connected with the ongoing political transition in Armenia.

(Tigran Avetisian)


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