Tuesday, August 1, 2023
U.S. Envoy To Again Visit Armenia, Azerbaijan
• Ruzanna Stepanian
Armenian trucks carriyng humanitarian aid for Nagorno-Karabakh are seen stranded
not far away from an Azerbaijani checkpoint set up at the entry of the Lachin
corridor, July 30, 2023.
A U.S. special envoy for Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations will visit Yerevan
and Baku again this week amid the worsening humanitarian crisis in
Nagorno-Karabakh which seems to be prompting growing concern in Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken again called for an end to Azerbaijan’s
blockade of the Lachin corridor when he telephoned Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliyev over the weekend. Blinken said he expressed “deep concern” over the
resulting severe shortages of food, medicine and other essential items in
Karabakh.
Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), described the situation in the Armenian-populated region as “very
troubling.” “I join Secretary Blinken’s call for the free transit of commercial
and humanitarian supplies through the corridor,” she tweeted on Tuesday.
On Monday, an official in Stepanakert claimed that the Azerbaijani government
has cancelled a U.S.-mediated meeting with Karabakh representatives which was
due to take place in Slovakia on Tuesday. He said Western mediators will visit
Yerevan in the coming days to discuss the issue with Karabakh officials.
The U.S. Embassy in Yerevan did not confirm or deny this. “We are ready to
support any process that will bring peace and stability to people of the South
Caucasus,” it said in written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenia - U.S. envoy Louis Bono (left) at a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian, Yerevan, March 7, 2023.
The embassy also announced that the U.S. envoy, Louis Bono, will visit the
region later this week to discuss “U.S. support for the peace process and the
best way to achieve a lasting and dignified peace.” It did not elaborate.
Washington has repeatedly said that the Azerbaijani blockade is complicating
international efforts to broker a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The
State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, insisted on Monday that the deal is
“within reach.”
“However, we have always said that for it to be within reach both parties have
to make difficult compromises,” Miller told reporters.
According to the State Department, during his conversation with Aliyev, Blinken
“emphasized the need for compromise on alternative routes so humanitarian
supplies can reach the population of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Baku says that food and other basic necessities should only be supplied to
Karabakh from Azerbaijan proper. The European Union’s foreign policy chief,
Josep Borrell, countered last week that the Azerbaijani-controlled supply line
“should not be seen as an alternative to the reopening of the Lachin corridor.”
Jailed Former Defense Minister Testifies Before Armenian Parliament Panel
• Artak Khulian
Armenia - Former Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan testifies before a parliament
commission, Yerevan, August 1, 2023.
Former Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan was allowed to testify before Armenian
pro-government lawmakers on Tuesday despite being held in detention and standing
trial on corruption charges strongly denied by him.
Tonoyan appeared before an ad hoc parliamentary commission tasked with examining
the causes of Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan. The two
opposition blocs represented in the National Assembly boycott the work of the
commission, saying that it was set up last year to whitewash Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinian’s wartime incompetence and disastrous decision making.
Tonoyan called for an end to the opposition boycott in his opening remarks
accessible to media. He also said that his decision to testify before the panel
made up of Pashinian’s political allies should not be construed by the
opposition as a sign that he has cut a “deal” with the Armenian government.
Gegham Manukian, a lawmaker representing the main opposition Hayastan alliance,
was quick to reject his appeal. “We continue to insist that Nikol Pashinian and
his regime cannot impartially examine their own actions,” Manukian wrote on
Facebook
Manukian noted that Tonoyan criticized the opposition for trying to oust
Pashinian in the immediate aftermath of the six-week war stopped by a
Russian-brokered ceasefire. At the same time, he described the ex-minister as a
government “hostage.”
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian speaks at a meeting with Defense
Minister Davit Tonoyan (L) and top Armenian army generals, Yerevan, July 18,
2020.
Over the past year, the commission has questioned dozens of current and former
government officials, including Pashinian, as well as military officers.
Testifying before it in June, the prime minister again defended his handling of
the 2020 war and effectively shifted blame for its outcome onto Armenia’s top
military brass. Onik Gasparian, the wartime army chief of staff, disputed some
of his claims.
Tonoyan confirmed Gasparian’s earlier assertion that two days after the outbreak
of large-scale hostilities in September 2020 the latter warned the country’s
political leadership to stop them because the Armenian side is headed for
defeat. He also said that Turkey’s direct military intervention in the war
proved decisive for Azerbaijan’s victory. That intervention, he said, was
unexpected for the Armenian military which had calculated that it could “fight
back Azerbaijani aggression.”
“We had not calculated that the Turkish armed forces could appear only 25-45
kilometers away from the Artsakh theater of war and carry out flights there,”
added Tonoyan.
Tonoyan was sacked as defense minister in the wake of the war and arrested in
2021 in a criminal investigation into alleged supplies of faulty ammunition to
the Armenian Air Force. He, two army generals and an arms dealer went on trial
in 2022. They all deny fraud and embezzlement charges leveled against them.
More Torture Allegations Revealed Against Armenia’s Top Investigator
• Naira Bulghadarian
Armenia - The head of the Investigative Committee, Argishti Kyaramian, speaks
during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan, January 19, 2023.
Three more men have accused the head of Armenia’s Investigative Committee,
Argishti Kyaramian, of torturing them during an ongoing criminal investigation
into a controversial video blogger based in the United States, prosecutors said
on Tuesday.
Another suspect in the case, Tigran Arakelian, alleged on June 22 that Kyaramian
and the chief of the Investigative Committee’s Yerevan division, Azat Gevorgian,
beat him up in the latter’s office during his initial, brief detention.
Arakelian was moved to house arrest earlier in June after being charged with
blackmailing state officials. Kyaramian dismissed through a spokesman his
“baseless” allegations before prosecutors ordered another law-enforcement
agency, the National Security Service (NSS), to investigate them.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General revealed that the three other suspects also
claimed to have also been ill-treated by Kyaramian in custody.
A lawyer representing one of the suspects, Artak Mkrtumian, said his client
first alleged such violence when representatives of Armenia’s Office of the
Human Rights Defender visited him shortly after his arrest.
“He said he doesn’t want to file a complaint for fear of further torture and
also because he fears for the safety of his relatives,” the lawyer, Levon
Baghdasarian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
According to Baghdasarian, such a complaint was lodged by another suspect, Artak
Galstian. The latter is the nominal head of a small party set up by the blogger,
Vartan Ghukasian.
A screenshot of YouTube video posted by Vartan Ghukasian, May 25, 2023.
A former police officer nicknamed Dog, Ghukasian is notorious for using
profanities to attack both Armenia’s current leaders and their political foes in
videos posted on YouTube. The Investigative Committee charged Ghukasian with
extortion, calls for violence and contempt of court before a Yerevan court
issued in May an international arrest warrant for him. The U.S.-based blogger
denies the accusations.
The committee arrested Arakelian again and had him remanded in pre-trial custody
last week after brining more criminal charges against him. It claimed, in
particular, that he helped Ghukasian discredit a judge who allowed investigators
to hold the other suspects in detention. Their torture allegations are also
denied by the law-enforcement agency.
“With baseless and ludicrous allegations, they are trying to undermine public
trust in the objectivity of the ongoing criminal investigation into the case
involving them and facts uncovered by it,” a spokesman for Kyaramian said in
written comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
He expressed hope that the NSS will assess their behavior accordingly. The NSS
has not indicted Kyaramian or any other law-enforcement official so far.
“I have the impression that they are investigating [the torture claims] just for
the sake of investigation,” Baghdasarian said in his regard.
Zaruhi Hovannisian, a human rights campaigner, was also worried about an
official cover-up of the alleged torture. Hovannisian and other activists say
that ill-treatment of criminal suspects remains widespread in Armenia despite
sweeping law-enforcement reforms promised by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s
government.
Kyaramian, 32, is widely regarded as one of Pashinian’s trusted lieutenants,
having held five high-level positions in the Armenian security apparatus and
government since 2018.
Reposted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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