Armenia’s national bar association may take disciplinary action against two lawyers accused by law-enforcement authorities of misconduct relating to the ongoing trials of radical opposition leader Zhirayr Sefilian and his supporters.
The lawyers, Mushegh Shushanian and Arayik Papikian, represent Sefilian and some of the members of his Founding Parliament movement who seized a police station in Yerevan last year.
The Chamber of Advocates has launched disciplinary proceedings against Shushanian and Papikian at the request of the Armenian police and a senior prosecutor respectively. It will decide whether they violated Armenian laws and statues regulating the work of lawyers.
In a letter to the chamber, the national police chief, Vladimir Gasparian, claimed that Shushanian recently made offensive comments about police officers which he said could “damage public trust in the entire law-enforcement system.” In particular, Gasparian cited an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service in which Shushanian denounced the as police as an “armed gang” ready to execute “any criminal order.”
Shushanian on Tuesday stood by his statements and accused the authorities of seeking to muzzle him. “This is interference in my freedom of expression, which is aimed at inhibiting the performance of my professional duties,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service. “They are trying to silence lawyers so that lawyers do not make statements or evaluations.”
The prosecutors’ complaint against the other lawyer, Papikian, stems from his June 29 Facebook post which accused police officers of torturing one of the arrested Founding Parliament gunmen in the basement of a Yerevan court where he has been standing trial together with 17 other men.
“The riposte will be just and very painful for the regime,” read that statement.It also charged that the Armenian police serve a “regime that usurped power from the people.”
Papikian too was unrepentant about his actions. He said the disciplinary action sought by the authorities is part of what he called serious violations of the due process in the two high-profile cases.
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