In a highly controversial but anticipated ruling, the Yerevan court of Kentron-Marash presided by judge Zhora Vardanyan yesterday sentenced Gagik Jahangiryan, a former deputy prosecutor-general linked to the Armenian opposition, to three years in prison for allegedly resisting police during his arrest last year. The court convicted Jahangiryan under a corresponding article of Armenia’s Criminal Code, saying that he did not obey police orders, hit one police officer, Armen Harutiunyan (singer Shushan Petrosyan’s husband), and tore another officer Tigran Aghvanyan’s jacket. The judge in the politically charged case, Zhora Vartanyan, also cited the “high degree of public danger” posed by the crime. Reminder: Jahangiryan was sacked and arrested the day after delivering a fiery speech at an opposition rally in which he accused the Armenian authorities of rigging the February 19, 2008 presidential election and described opposition candidate Levon Ter-Petrosyan as its rightful winner. Although the police claimed at the time that Jahangiryan planned to “destabilize the situation in the capital,” he was eventually charged only with resisting a special police unit that ambushed his car just outside Yerevan. Gagik Jahangiriyn has rejected the charges as groundless and politically motivated throughout the high-profile trial. In a final lengthy speech in the court last week, he again accused the authorities of rigging the 2008 ballot, deliberately using lethal force against opposition protesters and illegally arresting dozens of Ter-Petrosyan loyalists. The attorneys of Jhangiryan are planning to appeal the verdict at the Court of Appeal and the European Court. In this case the myth of the Armenian jurisdiction may become a victim of trafficking.
