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    Categories: 2022

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 06/21/2022

                                        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
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