Prosecutor Asks for Judicial Sanction Against Armen Gevorgyan's Defender

The Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan (Shengavit Division) continued the hearing of case ED/0253/01/19 today. This was reported by the legal office of the second President of Armenia.

After opening the session, presiding Judge Anna Danibekyan announced that former Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan's defender, Alexander Kochubayev, informed the court that he could not attend the session due to being overloaded with another court hearing. Gevorgyan's other defender, Lusine Sahakyan, was also absent. Neither the court nor Gevorgyan had information regarding the reasons for her absence.

Judge Danibekyan planned to clarify the reasons for the defender's absence at the next session. Prosecutor Gevorg Baghdasaryan opined that the reasons for Lusine Sahakyan's absence were unreasonable and that such behavior aimed to make it impossible to conduct the trial in this case. The prosecutor requested that a judicial sanction be applied against the defender due to her absence.

Armen Gevorgyan reminded that his new defender, Alexander Kochubayev, had asked several times to reschedule the court sessions so that he could attend. In response to the judge's question about why Gevorgyan could not call and clarify the reasons for Lusine Sahakyan's absence, Armen Gevorgyan replied: “Until now, the court has rejected all my motions and violated my rights, and now you are asking me to clarify the defender's absence. You should have called the court staff before the session and clarified.”

The court declared a recess in order to try to ascertain the reasons for Lusine Sahakyan's absence.