Wednesday,
Court Agrees To Free Armenian Oppositionist
• Anush Mkrtchian
Armenia - Opposition politician Avetik Chalabian stands trial in Yerevan, August
1, 2022.
An opposition figure prosecuted on what he sees as politically motivated charges
was expected to be set free on Wednesday night after Armenia’s Court of Appeals
agreed to grant him bail.
Avetik Chalabian was first arrested on May 13 on charges of trying to pay
university students to participate in anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan.
He went on trial on July 26 and was released from prison the following day
because of the expiry of his detention period.
Although prosecutors did not ask the judge presiding over the trial to extend
the detention, he decided to send Chalabian back to jail on August 3.
Chalabian’s lawyers challenged the decision in the higher court, asking it to
release their client on bail. The prosecutors did not object to the request.
The court set the bail amount at 15 million drams ($37,000). The oppositionist’s
family and legal team scrambled to raise the sizable sum after a Court of
Appeals judge, Ruzanna Barseghian, announced the decision in the evening.
Barseghian was scheduled to rule on the appeal at noon. Commenting on the delay,
one of the defense lawyers, Varazdat Harutiunian, suggested that she resisted
government pressure to keep Chalabian under arrest.
The charges leveled against him are based on leaked audio of short fragments of
his conversation with the head of the student council of the Armenian National
Agrarian University. Chalabian’s lawyers say that the recording was doctored by
the authorities. They have repeatedly demanded the release of full audio of the
conversation.
Chalabian, who leads a small opposition party, has also accused the authorities
of forcing his younger brother Ara to resign from Armenia’s Central Bank because
of his political activities.
Ara Chalabian headed the bank’s Department of Corporate Services and Development
until announcing his resignation in late July. He gave no reason for his exit.
Armenian news websites claimed earlier in July that the bank chairman, Martin
Galstian, told Ara Chalabian to quit, citing an order from Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian. The Central Bank and Pashinian’s office did not confirm or refute
those reports.
EU Head Hosts Another Armenian-Azeri Summit
Belgium - EU Council President Charles Michel meets with Armenia's and
Azerbaijan's leaders in Brussels, .
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan reportedly agreed to intensify discussions
on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty when they met again in Brussels on
Wednesday for talks hosted by European Council President Charles Michel.
It was their third trilateral meeting in five months held in the Belgian
capital. It lasted for about four hours.
“Today we agree to step up substantive work to advance on the peace treaty
governing inter-state relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and tasked the
Foreign Ministers to meet within one month to work on draft texts,” Michel said
in a statement released after the meeting.
The Armenian government likewise said that the two ministers will meet before
the end of September to “continue substantive negotiations” on the peace accord
sought by Azerbaijan.
Michel already said in early April that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian
and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pledged to “move rapidly” towards
negotiating such an accord.
Baku wants the treaty to uphold Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh. Yerevan
has said, for its part, that it should address the disputed territory’s status.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers most recently met in Tbilisi in
July.
Michel also said on Wednesday that he, Aliyev and Pashinian “reviewed progress”
on ongoing efforts to restore Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links and demarcate
the border between the two South Caucasus states.
“We agreed that the next meeting of the [Armenian-Azerbaijani] Border
Commissions will take place in Brussels in November,” added the head of the
European Union’s top decision-making body.
The commissions met in Moscow on Tuesday. Russian officials led by Deputy Prime
Minister Alexei Overchuk also participated in the meeting.
Michel reported no further agreements on the transport links. He said in May
that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed on “principles of border administration,
security, land fees but also customs in the context of international transport.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan are to reopen their border to commercial and passenger
traffic under the terms of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped their
six-week war for Nagorno-Karabakh in November 2020.
Aliyev has repeatedly claimed that the deal calls for an exterritorial land
corridor for Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave passing through Armenia’s Syunik
province. He has said that passage through the corridor must be exempt from
Armenian border controls. Yerevan has rejected his demands.
Russia Scoffs At EU Mediation In Armenian-Azeri Talks
RUSSIA - Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova speaks at a news
briefing in Moscow, January 20, 2022.
Russia on Wednesday dismissed the European Union’s continuing efforts to broker
Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements, saying that they are driven by geopolitics,
rather than a sincere desire to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that the EU has nothing to offer the
conflicting sides as European Council President Charles Michel hosted fresh
talks between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels. It was their
third meeting in five months.
“We see that the EU’s activity in the South Caucasus is determined by
geopolitical ambitions,” said Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.
“In our opinion, this basically has nothing to do with a real desire to
facilitate the normalization of Azerbaijani-Armenian relations.”
“I would say that these are pseudo-initiatives of the Europeans,” she told a
news briefing in Moscow. “They are more like an attempt to shamelessly
appropriate the laurels of mediation [from Russia,] which is not backed up by
anything.”
“We, as mediators, are working, and this work brings concrete results and is
assessed accordingly by the parties. As for those who pretend to be mediators
while not being intermediaries, apparently they are just not capable of offering
anything,”
Moscow has repeatedly deplore the EU’s mediation efforts before, saying that
they are part of the West’s attempts to hijack Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks
and use the Karabakh conflict in the standoff over Ukraine. A senior EU diplomat
insisted in June that the 27-nation bloc is not competing with Russia in its
pursuit of the conflict’s “comprehensive settlement.”
Michel held his latest trilateral meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev the day after senior Armenian
and Azerbaijani officials met in Moscow for the second round of negotiations on
demarcating the border between the two South Caucasus states. Russian officials
led by Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk also participated in the talks.
Overchuk and his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts also co-head a trilateral
commission dealing with practical modalities of establishing
Armenian-Azerbaijani transport links in line with a Russian-brokered ceasefire
that stopped the 2020 war in Karabakh.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the commission has
made “substantial” progress towards reaching concrete agreements. “I hope that
they will be formalized very soon,” he said.
Former Karabakh Army Chief Arrested In Armenia
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenian Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutiunian (left) and Karabakh army
commander Mikael Arzumanian, December 3, 2020.
Armenian law-enforcement authorities have arrested a former commander of
Nagorno-Karabakh’s army on criminal negligence charges stemming from the 2020
war with Azerbaijan.
Lieutenant-General Mikael Arzumanian was reportedly taken into custody
immediately after entering Armenia from Karabakh earlier this week. The
Investigative Committee officially confirmed his arrest and indictment late on
Tuesday.
In a statement, the law-enforcement agency claimed that Arzumanian failed to
properly perform his duties after being appointed as commander of Karabakh’s
Armenian-backed Defense Army on October 27, 2020, one month after the outbreak
of the war. It specifically blamed him for the capture by Azerbaijani forces of
the strategic Karabakh town of Shushi (Shusha) which occurred less than two
weeks later.
The statement said Arzumanian did not deploy more troops around Shushi in the
days leading up to the town’s fall and misled the public about the situation on
the ground.
It was not clear whether Arzumanian will plead guilty to the accusations. His
lawyer could not be reached for comment.
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Azerbaijani soldiers patrol at a checkpoint on a road
outside the town of Shushi (Susa), November 26, 2020.
Arzumanian, 49, was replaced by another Karabakh general last year. He has
worked as an advisor to Arayik Harutiunian, the Karabakh president, since then.
Harutiunian on Tuesday voiced support for Arzumanian through his spokeswoman,
who described the latter as “one of our best military commanders.”
“His efforts made during the 2020 war are also undeniable,” the official, Lusine
Avanesian, told the Artsakhpress news agency. “True, he took command of the army
only 12 days before the end of the war, but he made large-scale efforts to
conduct military operations effectively.”
Armenian opposition leaders questioned the credibility of the charges leveled
against the Karabakh general. They included Seyran Ohanian, a former defense
minister who was hastily named to coordinate the defense of Shushi just days
before the town’s capture.
“Mikael Arzumanian was the [wartime] commander of the Defense Army for only
10-12 days,” Ohanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Wednesday. “It was hard
to turn things around in that situation.”
Armenia - Parents of soldiers killed in the 2020 Karabakh war rally outside
prosecutors' headquarters in Yerevan to demand Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's
prosecution, .
Other opposition figures went farther, saying that Arzumanian’s arrest is part
of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to deflect blame for the disastrous
war.
“Everyone except the supreme culprit is guilty,” Artur Vanetsian, a former
National Security Service director, said in a sarcastic Facebook post.
The Armenian opposition holds Pashinian primarily responsible for the outcome of
the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire on November 9, 2020.
The prime minister has put the blame on Armenia’s former leaders.
Arzumanian took over as Karabakh army commander after his predecessor, Jalal
Harutiunian, was seriously wounded in an Azerbaijani missile strike. Harutiunian
was appointed to a senior military position in Yerevan after recovering from his
wounds. He is not known to be facing any criminal charges.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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