RFE/RL Armenian Report – 09/07/2020

                                        Monday, September 7, 2020

Indicted Ex-Speaker Allowed To Leave Armenia

        • Marine Khachatrian

RUSSIA -- Armenian parliament speaker Ara Babloyan gives a press conference in 
St. Petersburg, April 13, 2018

Former parliament speaker Ara Babloyan was allowed by a Yerevan court on Monday 
to temporarily leave Armenia despite standing trial on charges rejected by him 
as politically motivated.

Babloyan said he needs to travel to Belgium on a short trip related to his 
current work as head of Armenia’s largest children’s hospital.

“I’m glad that I received permission to leave because [the trip] is necessary 
not for me but our country, our people and those children who are treated at the 
Arabkir Medical Center,” he told reporters. He said he will return to the 
country on October 4, well before the next session of his trial slated for 
November 18.

Babloyan’s lawyer, Aram Vartevanian, said trial prosecutors did not object to 
the permission granted by the judge presiding over the trial.

In Vartevanian’s words, the judge had already allowed his client to travel to 
Switzerland earlier this year. The 72-year-old pediatric surgeon cancelled that 
trip because of the coronavirus pandemic and his hospital’s involvement in the 
Armenian authorities’ efforts to contain it, said the lawyer.

Babloyan and one of his former aides, Arsen Babayan, were charged last October 
with abusing their powers and forging documents to help Armenia’s former 
leadership install Hrayr Tovmasian as chairman of the Constitutional Court in 
March 2018. Babayan was arrested but freed on bail three weeks later.

The Special Investigative Service (SIS) indicted the two men as Tovmasian faced 
growing government pressure to resign. It claimed that the former Armenian 
parliament elected him court chairman in breach of the country’s constitution.

The SIS said that Babloyan illegally accepted and announced the resignation of 
Tovmasian’s predecessor, Gagik Harutiunian, before receiving a relevant letter 
from him. It said that Babayan, who was the deputy chief of the parliament staff 
at the time, backdated the letter to enable Tovmasian to head the Constitutional 
Court before the entry into force of sweeping amendments to the Armenian 
constitution.

The amendments introduced a six-year term in office for the head of Armenia’s 
highest court. Tovmasian, 49, became chief court justice under the previous 
constitution which allows him to hold the post until the age of 70.

Both defendants strongly deny the accusations. Babloyan, who served as 
parliament speaker from 2017-2018, claimed to be subjected to “crude political 
persecution” at the start of their trial in May. He accused the SIS of 
committing “pathetic and blatant violations” of the due process.



Toxic Alcohol Claims More Victims In Armenia

        • Susan Badalian

Armenia -- Homemade vodka sold on a roadside.

Health authorities continued to hospitalize people at the weekend as a result of 
Armenia’s worst-ever alcohol poisoning which has left 17 people dead and nearly 
30 others seriously ill.

According to the Ministry of Health, eight hospitalized people remained a 
critical condition on Monday. Some of them have lost the vision in their eyes, a 
ministry spokeswoman told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

The ministry reported mass intoxications and the first 11 deaths caused by them 
on September 1. Six more people died in the following days.

Most of the victims lived in Armavir, a small town 45 kilometers west of 
Yerevan. Law-enforcement authorities believe that they died after drinking 
bootleg vodka purchased from another local resident, Ashot Hovsepian. He was 
arrested on September 1.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee arrested two other people a few days later on 
suspicion of supplying Hovsepian with methanol, a highly toxic alcohol used for 
industrial purposes. According to the law-enforcement agency, Hovsepian diluted 
it with water before selling the poisonous drink to local residents.

All three arrested men deny any wrongdoing, saying that they thought they are 
buying and selling ethanol alcohol used in vodka production.

“Laboratory tests have determined that all Armavir victims had purchased the 
alcoholic beverage from the same place,” said Romela Abovian, a senior official 
from the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It also emerged that the [intoxication] cases in Yerevan were also caused by 
methanol,” Abovian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.



Russian, Armenian Army Chiefs Meet Amid Joint Drills


Russia -- Top Russian and Armenian military officials meet in Moscow, September 
5, 2020.

Russia’s and Armenia’s top army generals met in Moscow over the weekend as 
troops from the two countries began a joint military exercise near the 
Armenian-Turkish border.

Lieutenant-General Onik Gasparian, the chief of the Armenian army’s General 
Staff, held talks with his Russian opposite number, General Valery Gerasimov, 
after attending the closing ceremony of the annual International Army Games 
organized by the Russian Defense Ministry.

Official Armenian and Russian sources said the two men discussed close military 
ties between their nations but gave very few details.

In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry cited Gerasimov as calling Armenia 
Russia’s “ally and key partner in the Transcaucasus.” For his part, Gasparian 
described Russia as his country’s “strategic ally” and stressed the “special 
significance” of Russian-Armenian relations for Yerevan.

According to the statement, he also thanked the Russian military for helping to 
contain the spread of the coronavirus among Armenian and Russian military 
personnel serving in Armenia. Moscow sent a team of Russian army medics and 
special equipment to the South Caucasus state for that purpose in April.

Later on Saturday, Russia’s Southern Military District announced the start of a 
fresh Russian-Armenian exercise held at two training grounds in northwestern 
Armenia. It said the drill will involve about a thousand soldiers of the Russian 
military base headquartered in Gyumri, 200 tanks, artillery systems and other 
military hardware as well as two dozen Russian and Armenian warplanes.

A statement released by Russia’s Southern Military District on Monday said 
Russian MiG-29 fighter jets engaged in imaginary dogfights with enemy aircraft 
and struck ground targets as part of defensive and offensive operations 
simulated by the two militaries. It said the jets, which are normally stationed 
in Yerevan, then landed at an airfield in Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city 
located just 10 kilometers from the Turkish border.

The Armenian Defense Ministry did not issue any statements on the drill as of 
Monday afternoon.


Armenia -- Armenian and Russian troops hold a joint military exercise, April 12, 
2019.

Armenia hosts up to 5,000 Russian soldiers as part of its military alliance with 
Russia. Successive Armenian governments have regarded the Russian military 
presence as a crucial deterrent against Turkey’s possible military intervention 
in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The likelihood of such intervention appears to have increased after deadly 
hostilities that broke out on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July. Turkey 
blamed Armenia for the escalation and pledged to boost Turkish military aid to 
Azerbaijan.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on July 16 that the Armenians “will 
certainly pay for what they have done” to his country’s main regional ally. In 
what appears to be a related development, Turkish and Azerbaijani troops held 
last month joint two-week exercises in various parts of Azerbaijan.

The Armenian government responded by accusing Ankara of undercutting 
international efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict and posing a serious 
security threat to Armenia. Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security 
Council, said on August 2 that Yerevan counts on Moscow’s support in its efforts 
to counter that threat.

Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan clearly alluded to Turkey when he 
denounced the “expansion of some countries’ ambitions” in the South Caucasus in 
a speech delivered in Moscow last Friday.

“The Russian presence in the region as well as the deepening of 
military-political cooperation between Armenia and Russia are a very important 
deterring factor that helps to maintain regional stability and security,” 
Tonoyan said at a meeting of the defense ministers of several former ex-Soviet 
states, China, India and other countries.

Tonoyan addressed the meeting during what was his second visit to Moscow in less 
than two weeks. He met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and attended 
the opening ceremony of the International Army Games on August 23.


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