Monday, September 7, 2020
Indicted Ex-Speaker Allowed To Leave Armenia
• Marine Khachatrian
RUSSIA -- Armenian parliament speaker Ara Babloyan gives a press conference in
St. Petersburg, April 13, 2018
Former parliament speaker Ara Babloyan was allowed by a Yerevan court on Monday
to temporarily leave Armenia despite standing trial on charges rejected by him
as politically motivated.
Babloyan said he needs to travel to Belgium on a short trip related to his
current work as head of Armenia’s largest children’s hospital.
“I’m glad that I received permission to leave because [the trip] is necessary
not for me but our country, our people and those children who are treated at the
Arabkir Medical Center,” he told reporters. He said he will return to the
country on October 4, well before the next session of his trial slated for
November 18.
Babloyan’s lawyer, Aram Vartevanian, said trial prosecutors did not object to
the permission granted by the judge presiding over the trial.
In Vartevanian’s words, the judge had already allowed his client to travel to
Switzerland earlier this year. The 72-year-old pediatric surgeon cancelled that
trip because of the coronavirus pandemic and his hospital’s involvement in the
Armenian authorities’ efforts to contain it, said the lawyer.
Babloyan and one of his former aides, Arsen Babayan, were charged last October
with abusing their powers and forging documents to help Armenia’s former
leadership install Hrayr Tovmasian as chairman of the Constitutional Court in
March 2018. Babayan was arrested but freed on bail three weeks later.
The Special Investigative Service (SIS) indicted the two men as Tovmasian faced
growing government pressure to resign. It claimed that the former Armenian
parliament elected him court chairman in breach of the country’s constitution.
The SIS said that Babloyan illegally accepted and announced the resignation of
Tovmasian’s predecessor, Gagik Harutiunian, before receiving a relevant letter
from him. It said that Babayan, who was the deputy chief of the parliament staff
at the time, backdated the letter to enable Tovmasian to head the Constitutional
Court before the entry into force of sweeping amendments to the Armenian
constitution.
The amendments introduced a six-year term in office for the head of Armenia’s
highest court. Tovmasian, 49, became chief court justice under the previous
constitution which allows him to hold the post until the age of 70.
Both defendants strongly deny the accusations. Babloyan, who served as
parliament speaker from 2017-2018, claimed to be subjected to “crude political
persecution” at the start of their trial in May. He accused the SIS of
committing “pathetic and blatant violations” of the due process.
Toxic Alcohol Claims More Victims In Armenia
• Susan Badalian
Armenia -- Homemade vodka sold on a roadside.
Health authorities continued to hospitalize people at the weekend as a result of
Armenia’s worst-ever alcohol poisoning which has left 17 people dead and nearly
30 others seriously ill.
According to the Ministry of Health, eight hospitalized people remained a
critical condition on Monday. Some of them have lost the vision in their eyes, a
ministry spokeswoman told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
The ministry reported mass intoxications and the first 11 deaths caused by them
on September 1. Six more people died in the following days.
Most of the victims lived in Armavir, a small town 45 kilometers west of
Yerevan. Law-enforcement authorities believe that they died after drinking
bootleg vodka purchased from another local resident, Ashot Hovsepian. He was
arrested on September 1.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee arrested two other people a few days later on
suspicion of supplying Hovsepian with methanol, a highly toxic alcohol used for
industrial purposes. According to the law-enforcement agency, Hovsepian diluted
it with water before selling the poisonous drink to local residents.
All three arrested men deny any wrongdoing, saying that they thought they are
buying and selling ethanol alcohol used in vodka production.
“Laboratory tests have determined that all Armavir victims had purchased the
alcoholic beverage from the same place,” said Romela Abovian, a senior official
from the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It also emerged that the [intoxication] cases in Yerevan were also caused by
methanol,” Abovian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
Russian, Armenian Army Chiefs Meet Amid Joint Drills
Russia -- Top Russian and Armenian military officials meet in Moscow, September
5, 2020.
Russia’s and Armenia’s top army generals met in Moscow over the weekend as
troops from the two countries began a joint military exercise near the
Armenian-Turkish border.
Lieutenant-General Onik Gasparian, the chief of the Armenian army’s General
Staff, held talks with his Russian opposite number, General Valery Gerasimov,
after attending the closing ceremony of the annual International Army Games
organized by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Official Armenian and Russian sources said the two men discussed close military
ties between their nations but gave very few details.
In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry cited Gerasimov as calling Armenia
Russia’s “ally and key partner in the Transcaucasus.” For his part, Gasparian
described Russia as his country’s “strategic ally” and stressed the “special
significance” of Russian-Armenian relations for Yerevan.
According to the statement, he also thanked the Russian military for helping to
contain the spread of the coronavirus among Armenian and Russian military
personnel serving in Armenia. Moscow sent a team of Russian army medics and
special equipment to the South Caucasus state for that purpose in April.
Later on Saturday, Russia’s Southern Military District announced the start of a
fresh Russian-Armenian exercise held at two training grounds in northwestern
Armenia. It said the drill will involve about a thousand soldiers of the Russian
military base headquartered in Gyumri, 200 tanks, artillery systems and other
military hardware as well as two dozen Russian and Armenian warplanes.
A statement released by Russia’s Southern Military District on Monday said
Russian MiG-29 fighter jets engaged in imaginary dogfights with enemy aircraft
and struck ground targets as part of defensive and offensive operations
simulated by the two militaries. It said the jets, which are normally stationed
in Yerevan, then landed at an airfield in Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city
located just 10 kilometers from the Turkish border.
The Armenian Defense Ministry did not issue any statements on the drill as of
Monday afternoon.
Armenia -- Armenian and Russian troops hold a joint military exercise, April 12,
2019.
Armenia hosts up to 5,000 Russian soldiers as part of its military alliance with
Russia. Successive Armenian governments have regarded the Russian military
presence as a crucial deterrent against Turkey’s possible military intervention
in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The likelihood of such intervention appears to have increased after deadly
hostilities that broke out on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in July. Turkey
blamed Armenia for the escalation and pledged to boost Turkish military aid to
Azerbaijan.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on July 16 that the Armenians “will
certainly pay for what they have done” to his country’s main regional ally. In
what appears to be a related development, Turkish and Azerbaijani troops held
last month joint two-week exercises in various parts of Azerbaijan.
The Armenian government responded by accusing Ankara of undercutting
international efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict and posing a serious
security threat to Armenia. Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security
Council, said on August 2 that Yerevan counts on Moscow’s support in its efforts
to counter that threat.
Armenian Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan clearly alluded to Turkey when he
denounced the “expansion of some countries’ ambitions” in the South Caucasus in
a speech delivered in Moscow last Friday.
“The Russian presence in the region as well as the deepening of
military-political cooperation between Armenia and Russia are a very important
deterring factor that helps to maintain regional stability and security,”
Tonoyan said at a meeting of the defense ministers of several former ex-Soviet
states, China, India and other countries.
Tonoyan addressed the meeting during what was his second visit to Moscow in less
than two weeks. He met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and attended
the opening ceremony of the International Army Games on August 23.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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