“The court confirmed the information that, yes, the server of the Criminal Court of Appeal was confiscated, which later created an opportunity for the head of the Criminal Court of Appeal to manually endorse Arush Arushanyan’s case,” said the mayor of Goris Arush Arushanyan’s lawyer, Erik Aleksanyan, told reporters during the break in Arush Arushanyan’s trial (led by judge Mnatsakan Harutyunyan). He said that they had filed a motion to the judge to withdraw, but noted that they were predicting what decision the court would make, so they decided not to participate in the court session.
Erik Aleksanyan said that the presiding judge was asked if he had tried to find out on what principle he himself had been elected presiding judge on this appeal. On this occasion, the lawyer said, “The court did not give us a sufficient answer about that. It said that he did not discuss any such issue with the head of the court, and in general, he did not discuss this case with anyone.”
Erik Aleksanyan said that this answer was enough for them to submit a motion for self-withdrawal. He clarified, “The law and case law says that the judge and the court should not only be impartial and objective, but it should at least look like that. Maybe this judge is impartial, but do the realities in the current objective reality testify to that? Complaints are randomly selected. Of course not. I definitely see a trend. The reality is that when the cases of the heads of all the communities of Syunik are submitted to the Court of Appeals, the NSS confiscates the server, which does not allow them to carry out objectively relevant signatures on the computer.”
Erik Aleksanyan said he was sure that their motion for self-withdrawal would be rejected, and in general their complaint would be rejected. He assured that Arush Arushanyan’s case simply could not be signed by another judge. In response to a question about his expectations related to Arush Arushanyan’s precautionary measure, the lawyer answered, “The examination of this complaint was not coincidentally endorsed for this judge, nor was Armen Danielyan endorsed coincidentally for Manvel Paramazyan’s case. I do not believe in coincidences. In the case of Manvel Paramazyan, the same judges whose names I listed were endorsed, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a simple fact, we have to come to terms with it. I am not sure that we will have a different fate than Manvel Paramazyan. Arush Arushanyan is no exception. If the current authorities think that Arush Arushanyan can be broken or threatened with arrest, maybe those people have their own internal fears. Let them think about their own internal fears. Arush Arushanyan has no fear. He is not scared of detainment, and he handles all of this with a smile.”
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Tatev Harutyunyan
