Jailed former Armenian parliament official’s lawyers appeal to Ombudsman - Pastinfo

16:18 • 23.02.21

The advocates representing Ara Saghatelyan, the recently detained former chief of the National Assembly’s staff, have appealed to the Ombudsman of Armenia, questioning the legitimacy of the court measure.

In comments to Pastinfo, a member of the defense team, Hakob Yenokyan, said they called a special attention to “anti-legal processes” observed on the arrest day. Representatives from the Human Rights Defender’s Office later visited the detention ward where Saghatelyan is being held in isolation.

The National Security Service (NSS) had earlier searched the offices of Saghatelyan, political analyst Karen Bekaryan, an expert in Azerbaijani studies, Angela Elibekova, and a specialist of constitutional law, Gohar Meloyan. All the four were later apprehended after a confiscation of personal computers and mobile phones. The latter two were later released; Saghatelyan, Bekaryan and two civic activists, identified as Mher Sargsyan and Aram Sargsyan, were arrested. A motion for their detention was later filed with a first instance court which, however, rejected the measure of restraint on the grounds of “insufficient reasonable suspicion”.

The Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction had also ruled on the illegitimacy of Saghatelyan’s arrest, citing “unconfirmed evidence” in the suspicions of “breaches of martial law" under conditions of war. But the court later issued a sanction for detaining the politiician.

Saghatelyan, who earlier headed the Public Relations and Information Center (an instution adjunct to the Staff of the President of Armenia), played an active role for many yearsin the information warfare against Azerbaijan, making the war crimes committed by that country’s leadership accessible to the international media.

He went to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) shortly after the outbreak of the 2020 war to assist in the activities of the international media outlets covering details of the attacks by the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem. On November 8, a day before the signing the capitulation act (the Russia-brokered ceasefire that led to the loss of about 85 per cent of Artsakh), the government-run “black propaganda” reportedly began lashing out at him, spreading libels against the former official. The reports were denied shortly afterwards, and criminal cases followed. Later, however, Taron Chakhoyan, a person notorious for spreading lies through fake social media accounts, was promoted to the rank of a deputy chief of the prime minister of Armenia. Nikol Pashinyan’s move to appoint him to the senior government post was seen as an apparent sign that Chakhoyan himself was the person behind the widely perceived persecutions against Saghatelyan.

Saghatelyan had earlier revealed to Pastinfo his suspicions of “too much concentration’ on, and “cautious attitude towards”, his personality. He said that he also feared special measures being taken in an effort to discredit him or isolate him from certain processes.

The expert community had earlier reported “political persecutions” against Saghatelyan, insisting on his status as a political prisoner.