Recently, it was said that the “Freedom House” international law defense organization had called on the “Millennium Challenges” corporation to not provide to aid to Armenia based on the fact that Armenia hasn’t defended the political rights and civil freedoms of society.
During a joint-press conference with attorneys Hayk Alumyan, Zaruhi Postanjyan and Robert Grigoryan, the case of chief-editor of “Zhamanak Yerevan” newspaper Arman Babajanyan, who has been in jail for the past four months now, was connected to the decision made by “Freedom House”. “This is not the only thing that is connected to that. “Freedom House” has declared that Armenia is falling behind the path towards democracy and that’s why they wish to have an influence through the means of funding. Not providing the funding for the corporation’s programs is due to the influence that the Armenian government has on journalists and mass media,” said Z. Postanyan. Let’s recall that Arman Babajanyan was accused of preparing fake documents with the purpose of evading army service in Armenia and was sentenced to four years in prison.
On November 7, attorneys Hayk Alumyan and Zaruhi Postanjyan defended Arman Babajanyan along with attorney Robert Grigoryan during the trial at the Cassation court and the first session was scheduled for 12:00 p.m. The attorneys said during the press conference that Arman Babajanyan had sent a note to the Shengavit army registration office so that they could apply the law, according to which the army registration office allows the male who hasn’t served in the army to pay a specific amount and legally receive his army service booklet and even stop the criminal persecution, if there is persecution. A. Babajanyan sent a letter to the Minister of Defense of Armenia Serge Sarkisyan, asking him to apply the law. According to the attorneys, 27-year old males who have evaded army service during 1992-2005 have the right to take advantage of that law. According to the law, the persecution of the person ends based on the clause of the law stating the change in the situation. Attorney R. Grigoryan also said: “Arman Babajanyan, who had committed a crime like this for the first time in his life, actually regretted doing what he did in court; he founded a medium and adopted the principle of satisfying public opinion, he allows the people of a certain level of society to have their voices heard and he was just not the kind of person to punish like that…Babajanyan was not the kind of person who they had to isolate from society.” According to attorney Hayk Alumyan, A. Babajanyan’s case was not your average case and he is amazed that this was the kind of trial that took place for the person accused based on the 327th article of the criminal code (evading army service). “Usually the community, territorial and regional prosecutors are the ones that investigate cases like these, but Babajanyan’s case was investigated at the investigative department of the Chief Prosecutor’s office and the high-ranking investigator examined the case. This means that the authorities didn’t consider this an average case. Besides that, the courts were obligated to release the accused from jail with money because the criminal court code states some clauses where that can’t be applied in other cases, but should be applied in cases like Babajanyan’s,” said H. Alumya, stating the fact that Babajanyan had been sentenced to four years without mentioning the hard circumstances and the means of reducing the number of years.