Armenia: judge in "Case of Seven" refuses to resign

Today, during a session on the so-called "Case of Seven", Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan, who is presiding over the litigation, has rejected his three challenges lodged by the defence.

At the very start of the session, a challenge petition against Martirosyan was stated by Ovik Arsenyan, advocate of defendant Alexander Aruzmanyan. According to Mr Arsenyan, the judge should retire, since earlier Martirosyan had passed four verdicts on other cases related to March 1 events.

After a break, the court ruled to reject Arsenyan's petition as groundless.

Then, Melaniya Arustamyan, another defender, this time of Akop Akopyan, moved a new challenge of the judge. The advocate has expressed her bewilderment with the fact that many complaints of the defence had found no response with the prosecution.

According to her story, the advocates' complaints registered in special logbooks have mysteriously disappeared from the criminal case files. Meanwhile, under the current legislation, the case cannot be sent to the court, and the judge shall not accept the case to consideration until complaints of the defence remain unanswered.

Liparit Simonyan, still another representative of the defence, addressed the judge and stated that, according to recently adopted amendments to the Criminal and Criminal-Remedial Codes, starting March 1 this year criminal courts are liquidated in Armenia. Under the amendments, all the cases not yet brought to trial shall be delivered to communal courts, in this case, to the court of community Centre-Nork-Marash. Since the "Case of Seven" has not yet reached the proceeding, in all cases it will go to some other judge, working for that community court. Therefore, it is reasonable for Mnatsakan Martirosyan to retire.

To think this petition over, the judge announced an hourly break. And again it was found ungrounded.

A lot of time at the trial was taken by statements of the suffered party. Alla Ovanisyan, mother of Tigran Khachatryan, who was killed by "Cheryomukha-7" special weapon, asked the court to provide an advocate to her and to withdraw her son's murder out of the "Case of Seven", since her son had been killed by a special weapon, and obviously, the figurants of the "Case of Seven" have nothing to do with it.

Petitions to provide advocates were moved by other representatives of the casualties of March 1, 2008: mother of David Petrosyan and father of Gor Kloyan. The latter said: "Thanks to these guys (he pointed to the defendants, - note of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent), we escaped much more victims. If not for these guys, who negotiated with the police and calmed people, the count of casualties could have been in thousands."

A challenge of the judge was also stated by Vardui Elbakyan, advocate of Suren Sirunyan. Her reason was in the fact that the inquiry had been supervised by the public prosecutor, which breaks the equality of the parties. She also found ungrounded that the court chair was protracting the process.

The judge took the third hourly break, and then rejected the petition as ungrounded. The petitions on granting advocates remained unanswered.

Human rights activist Mikael Danielyan could not exclude, as he said in his interview to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, that "the trial is protracted in view of forthcoming changes in Articles 225 and 300 of the Criminal Code, under which the figurants of the "Case of Seven" are accused.