Criminal Case on Planning the Assassination of Pashinyan Dropped; Prosecution Against Vanetsyann, Ashot Minasyan, and Others Terminated

As previously reported, the National Security Service (NSS) has terminated the criminal case against Arthur Vanetsyann. This case was regarding allegations that he had prepared for the assassination of the Prime Minister of Armenia. The NSS had charged former NSS director Arthur Vanetsyann, commander of the ‘Sisakan’ battalion Ashot Minasyan, former member of the Republican Party Vahram Baghdasaryan, and ARF member Ashot Avagyan. Today, it became known that the case has been dropped, and the prosecution against them halted.

FactInfo reports, “It took the NSS more than a year to register the absurdity of the case, while the courts understood within hours that the charges were fabricated. The court's refusals to carry out detention requests were met with considerable ‘emotion’ from the current authorities; even a disciplinary proceeding was initiated against Judge Arman Hovhannisyan, who rejected the request to detain Minasyan. This proceeding was later dropped by the Ministry of Justice before reaching the Supreme Judicial Council, while Ashot Minasyan was even imprisoned a year later due to the efforts of the ‘punching’ judge from the prosecutorial bodies.”

In a conversation with FactInfo, Minasyan's lawyer Mihrán Poghosyan reported that a motion had been submitted to also terminate prosecution against Minasyan under Article 235, Part 1 of the Armenian Criminal Code. Regarding the fact that even with the case involving murder and attempted usurpation of power being dropped, Minasyan remains in custody, Poghosyan emphasized that this has no relation to the principles of law and humanity.

“If we momentarily disregard the factual data of the case, we currently have a 62-year-old individual with serious health issues, who is detained on suspicion of committing a medium-level crime. Let’s set aside what may be proven in court tomorrow. In our legal practice, there are thousands of similar cases where restraint measures have been chosen to avoid deprivation of liberty, especially since there are several instances where no restraint measures have been chosen at all,” Poghosyan noted, suggesting that in this case, keeping Ashot Minasyan in custody is legally inappropriate and is merely one of the political whims of the authorities.

The lawyer indicated that after receiving the response to the motion regarding the termination of prosecution against Minasyan, the defense would also utilize the possibility of changing the measure of restraint provided by the prosecutor's office. “I believe that the prosecutor's office will show reasonableness in these circumstances and will change the measure of restraint for Ashot Minasyan.”

When asked what actions had taken place during this past year regarding the case, or if it had merely remained in a ‘dormant’ state before being dropped after a year, the lawyer responded that it is currently difficult to assess, as they do not have the full extent of the cases concerning the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister and the usurpation of power since there has been a decision not to prosecute in that regard, and only the episode concerning Ashot Minasyan's alleged involvement with weapons has been separated from the case. From the materials accessible to the lawyer related to that episode, the content and essence of the interrogations indicate that a standard, non-urgent investigation was conducted, with nothing extraordinary present.

Mihrán Poghosyan emphasized that they initially contended that there could be no objective evidence to substantiate Ashot Minasyan's guilt in reality. “Finally, we have reached a point where the serious charges attributed to Ashot Minasyan were assigned to him for the purposes of solving other issues of political power during a specific period following the events of November 2020,” the lawyer stressed.

Poghosyan assessed that the criminal case has influenced various aspects of our social relations: it had led to strict reinforcement of security measures and marked the beginning of attacks related to the judicial system following the decision to reject the request for Minasyan’s detention. “These issues were resolved by political power, and thus the prosecution in this regard was terminated,” the lawyer concluded.