Tuesday, Authorities Under Pressure To Sack Armenia’s Top Judicial Official • Naira Nalbandian Armenia - Gagik Jahangirian, the acting head of the Supreme Judicial Council, speaks in the National Assembly, September 14, 2021. Armenian authorities faced on Tuesday growing calls to sack and prosecute the acting head of the country’s judicial watchdog accused of blackmailing his predecessor at odds with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) remained reluctant, however, to take any action against Gagik Jahangirian, who has headed the state body overseeing Armenian courts for the past 14 months. Ruben Vartazarian, who was controversially suspended as SJC chairman in April 2021, publicized on Monday a secretly recorded audio of his dinner meeting with Jahangirian which he said took place in February 2021. Jahangirian, who has not disputed the authenticity of the recording, can be heard seemingly warning Vartazarian to resign or face criminal charges. The latter was accused by Pashinian’s political allies of encouraging courts to free arrested opposition figures. Vartazarian did not heed the warning. The other members of the SJC suspended him in April 2021 immediately after he was charged with obstruction of justice. He rejects the accusation, saying that it was part of government efforts to replace him by Jahangirian and gain control over the judiciary. The SJC nominates Armenian judges, monitors their work and can take disciplinary action or dismiss them altogether. Armenia -- Ruben Vartazarian, head of the Supreme Judicial Council, holds a news conference in Yerevan, September 4, 2019. The release of the audio caused uproar, with opposition groups and civic activists describing it as clear evidence of political orders executed by Jahangirian and his illegal interference in the work of law-enforcement bodies. One of those activists, Daniel Ioannisian, submitted a relevant “crime report” to Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General. The office swiftly instructed another law-enforcement agency to conduct an inquiry. “It is absolutely unacceptable for an individual carrying out such deeds or making such a confession … to continue to serve as head of the Supreme Judicial Council,” Ioannisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. The SJC discussed the scandal at a meeting held on Tuesday. One of its members, Grigor Bekmezian, said that neither he nor any of his colleagues demanded disciplinary proceedings against Jahangirian. “Mr. Jahangirian gave us clarifications and explanations,” Bekmezian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “We are satisfied with what we have at this point. In order to have a full picture, we need a full audio [of the February 2021 meeting with Vartazarian.]” Armenia - Parents of soldiers killed in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan protest outside the Supreme Judicial Council building, Yerevan, May 26, 2022. Bekmezian did not deny reports that the SJC has decided instead to formally remove Vartazarian from the judicial watchdog over his comments made in a recent newspaper interview. In the publicized recording, Jahangirian also says that one of his key motives is to prevent former President Robert Kocharian from returning to power. Jahangirian was controversially arrested and jailed in 2008 during the final weeks of Kocharian’s decade-long presidency. He served as a deputy prosecutor-general at the time. Just days before the arrest, he voiced support for former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, the main opposition candidate in a 2008 presidential election. The main opposition Hayastan alliance, of which Kocharian is the top leader, seized upon Jahangirian’s admission, saying that it calls into question the legitimacy of the June 2021 parliamentary elections won by Pashinian’s party. Armenia - Andrea Wiktorin, head of the EU Delegation in Armenia, speaks at a conference on judicial reforms in Yerevan, June 8, 2022. In a separate statement, Hayastan urged the U.S. and European Union ambassadors to Armenia to “express your position on the publicized recording.” It also challenged them to state whether they still support the Pashinian government’s “judicial reforms” reportedly coordinated with Jahangirian. Opposition groups, lawyers and some judges have accused the government of seeking to increase its influence on courts under the guise of those reforms. Pashinian and his political allies say they are on the contrary increasing judicial independence. Lawmakers representing the ruling Civil Contract party declined to comment on Tuesday on the implications of Jahangirian’s secretly recorded statements. The party’s parliamentary group installed Jahangirian as a member of the SJC in January 2021. Police Official Fired After Deadly Shooting • Nane Sahakian • Gayane Saribekian Armenia - Investigators inspect the scene of a deadly shooting in Aparan, June 19, 2022. The Armenian police sacked on Tuesday the top police official of a small town where a gunman killed two local residents and wounded five others in disputed circumstances over the weekend. Law-enforcement authorities said the shooting was provoked by a road rage incident on a highway passing through the town of Aparan, which degenerated the following day into a violent clash between two groups of young men. The shooter, a 32-year-old resident of Yerevan, was arrested on Monday. The men killed and wounded by him reportedly lived in Aparan. Four of the wounded men were taken to a hospital in Yerevan. RFE/RL’s Armenian Service tried to speak to their relatives there. But they refused to comment on the incident that shocked the community 55 kilometers north of Yerevan. People randomly interviewed in Aparan were also reluctant to talk about its possible causes. “There has never been such a tragedy in Aparan before,” said one of them. No official reason was given for national police chief Vahe Ghazarian’s decision to fire the head of the local police department. Citing anonymous news sources, Armenian opposition figures and some media outlets claimed that the Aparan men were attacked because of publicly swearing at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The attackers, they alleged, are related to a local government official and an Aparan-based parliamentarian affiliated with Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. Both the officials and a Civil Contract spokesman angrily denied the allegations. The police likewise insisted that the shooting was not politically motivated. Despite the denials, several hundred opposition members and supporters marched to the Civil Contract headquarters in Yerevan on Monday to condemn the killings. They accused Pashinian of encouraging violent reprisals against his detractors. Armenian Opposition Leader Resigns From Parliament • Artak Khulian Armenia - Former President Serzh Sarkisian and former NSS Director Artur Vanetsian unveil their electoral alliance, May 15, 2021. Opposition leader Artur Vanetsian on Tuesday announced his resignation from Armenia’s parliament and the breakup of his Fatherland party’s alliance with former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK). Vanetsian said he is resigning his seat because he believes the National Assembly has “ceased to be an effective platform” for challenging the Armenian government and its “ruinous” policies. For the same reason, Fatherland will operate only “outside the parliament” from now on, he said in a statement. The decision, Vanetsian went on, also means the demise of the Pativ Unem alliance formed by Fatherland and the former ruling HHK in the run-up to the June 2021 parliamentary elections. Pativ Unem finished a distant third in those elections, becoming one of the two opposition blocs represented in the new National Assembly. Four of its six parliament deputies are affiliated with the HHK. Vanetsian’s party has been represented in the 107-seat parliament by its leader and former newspaper editor Taguhi Tovmasian. Another Fatherland parliamentarian defected from Pativ Unem last fall. Vanetsian said that Tovmasian and Martun Grigorian, an election candidate who is next in line to take up his parliament seat, will be free to decide whether or not to follow his example. Armenia - Opposition leader Artur Vanetsian (right) and his supporters protest in Yerevan, April 25, 2022. Sarkisian’s HHK did not immediately react to the decisions announced by its opposition ally. Vanetsian already promised in April that he will resign from the parliament if the Armenian opposition fails to topple Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. Pativ Unem and the other parliamentary opposition force, Hayastan, launched on May 1 daily demonstrations in Yerevan aimed at forcing Pashinian to resign. They failed to achieve their goal. In what they called a change of tactics, opposition leaders announced on June 14 that they will now hold antigovernment rallies in Yerevan on a weekly basis. Vanetsian did not clarify whether he and his party will remain involved in the opposition’s “resistance movement.” Vanetsian, 42, is a former officer of the National Security Service (NSS) who was appointed as head of Armenia’s most powerful security agency right after the 2018 “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. He became one of the most influential members of Pashinian’s entourage before being unexpectedly sacked in 2019. Vanetsian has since been a vocal critic of the prime minister. Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2022 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.