Application on violated rights of Smbat Aivazyan, activist of Armenian opposition, sent to Strasbourg

On April 14, Lusine Saakyan, advocate of oppositional activist Smbat Aivazyan, who was convicted under Article 316 of the Criminal Code of Armenia ("Resistance to power representative"), filed her application to the European Court on Human Rights on violation of the client's rights.

According to the advocate, six Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were broken, namely, the right to freedom, free and fair trial, right to the freedom of speech, right to the freedom of meetings and assemblies, and ban of discrimination.

Mr Aivazyan, a member of the Political Board of the opposition party named "Republic", former minister on state revenues and former deputy of the National Assembly was sentenced in November 2008 to two years of freedom deprivation under Article 316 of the Criminal Code of Armenia.

We remind you that after the presidential election, in the morning on February 24, 2008, in one of the central streets of Yerevan, unidentified persons in black masks attacked Smbat Aivazyan's personal car. He was taken away in an unknown direction. Later, it became known that Aivazyan was delivered to one of police stations of the capital, where he was charged with rendering resistance to power officials.

Smbat Aivazyan is one of the authors of the statement, addressed to Thomas Hammarberg, Supreme Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, in which public figures refused to meet him. They motivated their refusal by inaction of European bureaucracy against violations of human rights in Armenia.