Armenia: diplomats challenge their dismissal

On March 14, the Administrative Court considered a claim of four diplomats who were dismissed from office and deprived of their diplomatic ranks in February 2008, after they made a statement on February 24 about post-election processes in Armenia.

Vladimir Karapetyan, Karine Afrikyan, Marta Aivazyan and Arakel Semirdzhyan are four out of ten diplomats of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia who were dismissed right after the statement became public.

The then Minister of Foreign Affairs V. Oskanyan had declared that the diplomats broke Articles 40 and 44 of the Laws "On Diplomatic Service" of Armenia. According to these articles, a diplomat shall be dismissed, if he or she makes use of his or her service position for attaining one's partisan, public or other political or religious targets.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports that Levon Bagdasaryan, applicants' advocate, said: "In their statement the diplomats did nothing but express their concern with post-election events and called the parties to refrain from using force, long before the tragedy on March 1."

One of the applicants V. Karapetyan in his presentation drew attention of the court to the fact that the statement said nothing about support of any political force or candidate for president. The statement was given to the press, not to representatives of any political force. In Karapetyan's opinion, their statement of February 24 has nothing in violation of the above Articles of the Law "On Diplomatic Service".

Judge Ovsep Bedevyan who is chairing the trial plans to announce his verdict on May 29.