Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan issued a statement on Tuesday, denouncing the arrest of judge Boris Bakhshiyan as “legal disgrace”. The full text of the statement is provided below.

"Amid the extremely difficult challenges facing Armenia and Artsakh, the current authorities have focused all their resources on persecuting, harassing the opposition, arresting oppositionists at any cost and making maximum efforts to keep them in custody.

Arush Arushanyan, Manvel Paramazyan, Narek Mantashyan and Garnik Isahulyan were arrested exclusively for their political views.

Today we are no longer surprised by the arrest of a judge for administering justice. This is a new level of legal disgrace. This is an intentional move to destroy the independence of the judiciary and a new wave of intimidation through arrests. What is happening is the degradation of the rule of law, with the tacit assistance of international structures.

All this indicates that the authorities are weak and unable to cope with the complex challenges. Instead, they are doing their best to break the confrontation inside the country. Obviously, it is the authorities that are the biggest problem in the country.

These processes cannot last long; eventually, they will come to an end, because no authorities have got away with such a volume of illegal actions. The time to be held to account will come soon.”