The family of Robert Kocharyan, the second President of the Republic of Armenia, have sued the First Informational LLC, the founder and the manager of the First Informational and the Skizb Media Kentron LLC, the founder and the publisher of Zhamanak, a daily newspaper, for the second time already. They demand a denial of
the information that damaged their honor and dignity and 5 million-dram compensation. As Nikolay Baghdasaryan, a representative of the First Informational informed www.aravot.am, “The activities of the information agency would be impeded, if all their bank accounts were frozen. But there has been no such thing yet, although a motion has been filed in the court, but the court has denied. Only the property has been attached, and it is not clear yet what steps they will take in the future.” In this regard, Arpine Melikbekyan, the representative of Robert and Sedrak Kocharyan, the plaintiffs, gave us clarification. She informed that she hadn’t been informed by the court about the court session yet and said that one should wait until the session date was set, so that the parties could put forward their arguments in accordance with the law, and the case proceeded. In response to our question whether they would be consistent in pursuing their motion to freeze the bank accounts of the First Informational, A. Melikbekyan said: “We don’t aim at taking some negative step. We will employ all the measures that are permitted by the law. If you followed the former cases, you would know that the defendant always was unconscionable. Therefore, a motion has been filed in accordance with the procedures provided for by the law; the court has made its decision with regard to attaching the property, thus, it must have been carried out already.” In response to the observations that the regular lawsuits of the Kocharyan family filed against this information agency was considered as a restriction of the freedom of press, the plaintiffs’ representative said: “There have been such discussions among lawyers too. For some reason, the issue of honor and dignity has always been considered as a restriction of the freedom of press, but we don’t think so, nonetheless.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
