Armen Harutyunyan, Nora Karapetyan, Arayik Melkumyan. These are the names of candidates nominated for the position of the judge for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), who according to “Europe in Law Association” NGO data had presented their documents late of the deadline, September 24. In the conversation with Aravot.am, member of “Europe in Law Association” NGO, also lawyer Mushegh Shushanyan detailed, “After September 24, Ministry of Justice spokesman Tsovinar Khachatryan announced that 11 candidates have been registered, and the announcement on 14 candidates was put into circulation only on September 26. We have all grounds to say that the number of candidates was added by 3 as people submitting the documents at a later date were also included.”
To the reversal of Aravot.am that Armen Harutyunyan, for example, is the acting Head of the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, probably this is the reason why his documents arrived late, Mr. Shushanyan responded, “I will not make guessing and will speak by facts. The first fact is that the documents sent by Armen Harutyunyan via post mail is registered at the Department of Correspondence at the Minister of Justice on September 24, at 18:45, which means that it would not be delivered until 18:00, but his name as a candidate was recorded in the register. And if Armen Harutyunyan, or any candidate has a problem with submitting the documents within the terms, he can notify the Commission about it, like for example, Arman Sarvaryan did. He lives in the Great Britain and had sent the documents by post mail and had warned in advance that the documents might reach on September 25-26.”
Mushegh Shushanyan thinks that the process has already been shadowed. “We issued an announcement regarding on the aforesaid issues requesting the Commission to respond and provide an assessment, and we also demand that these three candidates are removed from the list. But the fact is that the Commission immediately passed to the interviewing phase, which shows that, according to them, nothing extraordinary has happened. Such violations have happened, there were this kind of countrywide elections in Armenia that are rigged, well, now, an hour back or forth, nothing can be changed. But it is evident that regardless of the outcome of the competition, already the objective and fair process of the competition is shadowed. This is a flagrant violation, a shame, and a distinct assessment should be given to it.”
Note that the staff of the Competition Commission performing the selection of the candidate nominated by Armenia for the position of ECHR judge, on this occasion, presented clarifications, which particularly reads, “The photocopy of the postal envelope attached to this notice evidences about submission of the documents by Armen Harutyunyan within the prescribed terms: “23 SEP 2014” and “24 SEP 2014”, which indicates the delivery of the documents via post office as of September 24, 2014. Given the abovementioned, relevant entries were made in the register. Referring to the terms of submitting documents by opponent Nora Karapetyan and Arayik Melqumyan, attached to this note you can find the photocopies of the pages taken from the registers at guard’s office at the Ministry of Justice certifying about the submission of the documents to the Ministry of Justice as of 22.09.2014 at 17:48 and 23.09.2014 at 15:18, respectively.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
