Author: Jhanna Virabian

Evidence now suggests that a bomb planted by the Islamic State militant group is the likely cause of last weekend’s crash of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, U.S. and European security sources said on Wednesday, reports.

Islamic State, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is battling the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula, said again on Wednesday it brought down the airplane, adding it would eventually tell the world how it carried out the attack.

The Airbus A321 crashed on Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula shortly after taking off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on its way to the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing all 224 people on board.

The U.S. and European security sources stressed they had reached no final conclusions about the crash.

Britain on Wednesday cited the likely possibility of an explosive device as the cause of the crash, but made no mention of any group that may have been responsible.

“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said after a meeting of the government’s crisis response committee chaired by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Armenians mourn the death of 224 passengers aboard the Russian Kogalymavia’s A321 airline that crashed over Egypt 30 minutes after takeoff in North Sinai Saturday.

People have been laying flowers and toys in front of the Russian Embassy in Armenia.

The Embassy has expressed gratitude for the heartfelt condolences, flowers, toys and candles lit in memory of the victims of the air crash in Egypt.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan earlier offered condolences to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

South African Olympic and Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has been released under house arrest nearly one year after he was jailed for killing his girlfriend, the BBC reports.

He is expected to spend the remainder of a five-year prison sentence at his uncle’s home in Pretoria.

He shot Reeva Steenkamp through a locked bathroom door in 2013 but said he thought she was an intruder.

Ms Steenkamp’s relatives say they think Pistorius is “getting off lightly”.

Pistorius, 28, was found guilty of culpable homicide, or manslaughter, of his 29-year-old girlfriend at a trial in October last year.

A case lodged by the prosecution appealing against that decision is due to be heard by the Supreme Court of Appeal on 3 November. State prosecutors say Pistorius should have instead been convicted of murder.

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights is expected to deliver a judgment in the case of Perinçek v. Switzerland on 15 October. On this occasion he Armenian delegation led by RA Prosecutor General Gevorg Kostanyan has left for Strasbourg.

Armenia has been involved in the case as a third party. The involcement of the Republic of Armenia became possible due to the Court’s position not to address the legal wording of the Armenian Genocide, and, therefore,  not address the substantial issues related to the crimes committed by the Ottoman Empire against Armenians in 1915. Nevertheless, in its judgment it has referred to the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide and made evaluative assessments principally unacceptable for Armenia. The judgment also included a number of contradictory assessments.

The Republic of Armenia expects a fair verdict, which will not contain formulations that will cast doubt on the fact of the Armenian Genocide in historical, legal or any other context. The aim is to prevent the judgment of the European Court from becoming a tool in the hands of the Armenian Genocide deniers who will try to use it for their immoral purposes.

Reminder: The case concerns Turkish national Doğu Perinçek and his acts of  spreading racism and nationalism. He is the chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party and represents himself as a doctor of laws. During the months of May, July and September of 2005, Perinçek participated in three public events in cities of Lausanne, Opfikon and Köniz, Switzerland, in the course of which he publicly denied that mass deportations and massacres suffered by the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 onwards had amounted to genocide. More specifically, he qualified the Armenian Genocide as an “international lie”.

On July 2005, the Switzerland-Armenia Association lodged a complaint against Perinçek on account of the content of his statements made at the above-mentioned events. Following this complaint, on 9 March 2007 the Lausanne District Police Court found him guilty of the offence of racial discrimination under Article 261 bis § 4 of the Swiss Criminal Code. The Lausanne District Police Court held that Perinçek’s speech on denial of the Armenian Genocide had racist motives, was nationalistic by its nature and cannot be considered to be within the historical discussion or debate. The Lausanne District Police Court has also mentioned that according to Swiss public opinion the Armenian Genocide is a universally proven event and proven historical fact. With this reasoning the court sentenced Perinçek to imprisonment and fine.

Perinçek appealed against the judgment of the Lausanne District Police Court in different instances, but to no avail.

In his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Doğu Perinçek has claimed that his criminal conviction and punishment for having publicly denied the Armenian Genocide was in breach of his right to freedom of expression under Article 10.

A Grand Chamber hearing in case of Perinçek v. Switzerland was held on 28 January 2015.

The members of the legal team led by Gevorg Kostanyan, the Government Agent before the ECtHR, RA Prosecutor General are Arman Tatoyan, RA Deputy Minister of Justice, Deputy Agent before the ECtHR, Emil Babayan, Prosecutor General, Geoffrey Robertson, the founder of London Doughty Street Chambers, a well-known international lawyer, Amal Clooney and Toby Collis, well-known international lawyers.

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs may hold talks this fall, RIA Novosti quoted the OSCE Secretary General as saying.

Addressing the CSTO Council meeting in Moscow, Secretary General Lamberto Zannier did not exclude the possibility of a meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Zannier said he discussed the Nagorno Karabakh issue with CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha.

“We are concerned over increased violence at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border,” the OSCE Secretary General said, adding that work with the political leadership is necessary.

“We had meetings with the Foreign Ministers and the Minsk Group Co-Chairs on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York. There may be another meeting this fall. We hope for a meeting between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Lamberto Zannier said.

Representatives of Armenian communities across Europe and the Middle East sent a letter to the UN asking for a resolution to ban the term ‘Islamic’ State, or ISIS, since the terror organization does not represent Islam, Sputnik News reports.

Members of the Armenian diaspora have sent a letter to the UN requesting a resolution to ban the use of the term ‘Islamic’ to describe the terror organization that has taken control of large parts of Iraq and Syria, because the militants do not represent Islam.

“We are very upset at the fact that important politicians, international organizations and the media call a dangerous terrorist organization the ‘Islamic State,’” Amram Petrosyan, the group’s president, .

“In our view, this is unjust and even provocative. We know that Muslims, Christians and people of other confessions always lived peacefully in the Middle East. If there were conflicts between communities, they were the fault of politicians and national leaders.”

“Fighters engaging in a bloody war need to be called terrorists, never Muslims. The very name of this terrorist organization in official documents as the ‘Islamic State,’ creates the basis for xenophobia and religious intolerance.”

The letter requesting a ban on the term ‘Islamic’ was sent by representatives of the international ‘New Armenia’ organization in Syria, Lebanon, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Montenegro and Serbia on October 7.

It has particular importance for Armenian resistance fighters who are battling the Islamic State in Syria, a commander of the Armenian militia in the Syrian city of Homs told Izvestiya.

“The Armenian militia as part of the Syrian National Defense Force, together with our Muslim brothers with whom Armenians have lived for more than ten centuries, through the good times and the bad, and regardless of religious affiliations, today are fighting the terrorists side by side,” said Viken Glchyan.

“Shedding blood together with Muslims against terrorists, we are upset when civilized countries call them the ‘Islamic State.’”

The letter from the Armenian diaspora follows a similar call from Russia’s Central Muslim Spiritual Board, which condemned the terrorist organization’s use of the term ‘Islamic,’ and suggested it instead be called ‘Daesh,’ the Arabic abbreviation for ISIS. On September 30 the Board announced its “resolute support” for Russia’s military intervention to help the Syrian government fight the terror group.

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, today informed the Committee of Ministers of his decision to withdraw the Council’s participation in the .

Since October 2014, a Council of Europe representative had been attending meetings in Baku intended to revive the dialogue between civil society and Azerbaijani authorities. Despite this initiative, the overall situation of human rights defenders in the country has deteriorated dramatically. An increasing number of human right defenders has recently been imprisoned, and the Council of Europe has received worrying reports about unacceptable detention conditions.

Prior to his intervention at the Committee of Ministers, the Secretary General had informed Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev of his decision.

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs managed to achieve progress in the negotiations  with Azerbaijan and Armenia on elements of a comprehensive agreement on the Karabakh conflict and helped  reduce tensions along the contact line, following increased violence late last year, James Warlick, the Minsk Group’s US co-chair,told Trend Sept. 22.

He was commenting on the work done by the OSCE Minsk Group since early 2015 regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

Warlick said the co-chairs look forward to bringing the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia together at the UN General Assembly to continue preparations for the next presidential summit.

“We hope the presidents will agree to meet before the end of the year,” he added. “The co-chairs will discuss these plans with the foreign ministers at the UN General Assembly, and we stand ready to bring the presidents together anytime.”

Commenting on the influence of a tension in relations between the US and Russia on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process, the co-chair said the two countries share the same objective on Nagorno-Karabakh, i.e. a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the conflict.

“Despite disagreements in other areas of the US-Russian relationship, we work closely in the co-chair format to make progress towards our common goal of reaching a lasting settlement that would transform the South Caucasus,” said Warlick.

Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta has been charged with several counts of corruption in a long-running investigation, prosecutors say, the BBC reports.

He faces charges of fraud, tax evasion and money laundering dating back to when he was a lawyer before he became prime minister in 2012, the country’s anti-corruption agency DNA said.

Some of his property has been seized pending the outcome of the case, the agency added.

Mr Ponta denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Ponta resigned as leader of the governing Social Democratic party on Sunday, saying he needed time to prepare his defence, but will continue to fulfil his duties as prime minister.

He is accused of receiving the equivalent of around €55,000 from a political ally and MP.