The European Court's Blow to Armenian Courts

The newspaper "Zhoghovurd" writes: "The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Armenia must pay 1 million 608 thousand euros to Armenian citizen Yuri Vardanyan. The court recognized his rights were violated back in 2016, stating that he had been deprived of the right to a fair trial and to protect his property. The decision issued yesterday pertains solely to compensation. His house located at 13 Buzandi Street was transferred to the state during the presidency of Robert Kocharyan, who is currently facing charges.

It should be noted that this decision of the ECHR can be classified among the exceptional cases for several reasons. Firstly, this amount exceeds the total compensations awarded by the European Court in all decisions against Armenia to date. Secondly, the court's conclusion specifically emphasizes the name of a particular judge, former Supreme Court President Arman Mkrtumyan.

Specifically, the conclusion states: "... Judge Mkrtumyan did not exhibit an objective stance, thereby violating the individual's right to a fair trial." This is unprecedented in that the ECHR rarely highlights specific opinions regarding particular judges. At that time, the legal community was convinced that Arman Mkrtumyan should at least resign, yet, as always, ordinary citizens of Armenia are left to deal with the consequences of the judge's erroneous decisions. He finally resigned only after the revolution.

Moreover, it is worth mentioning that in this case, the representative of the victims' interests at the ECHR, Vahe Grigoryan, initially demanded 10 million euros in compensation, but the amount was reduced by the ECHR to 1.5 million euros.

All day yesterday, "Zhoghovurd" attempted to contact Arman Mkrtumyan for comments but was unsuccessful. We spoke with Yervand Zakaryan, who served as the Mayor of Yerevan at that time and whose name also appears in the documents. He stated that he is currently out of the country, is not personally familiar with the decision in question, but noted: "Logic suggests that if citizens have disputed the mayor's decision in the first instance court, then what can I say? I am not personally familiar with the decision and cannot comment further."

Additionally, it should be noted that back in 2016, following the first decision concerning Mkrtumyan, Gevorg Kostanyan, who was then Armenia’s representative at the ECHR, initially deemed such decisions regarding judges as undesirable and stated that the courts needed reform. It has been several years now since everyone has been saying this, yet nothing has been achieved so far."