Despite serious concerns voiced by other judges as well as many lawyers, a court in Yerevan allowed the National Security Service (NSS) to take Boris Bakhshiyan into custody on charges stemming from another decision made by him recently.
The NSS and state prosecutors requested a state judicial watchdog’s permission to indict Bakhshiyan just days after he agreed to release Ashot Minasian, a prominent war veteran and opposition activist, on January 26.
Minasian was arrested on December 1 one year after being charged with plotting to kill Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and overthrow the Armenian government and illegally possessing weapons. The National Security Service dropped the coup charges later in December.
Bakhshiyan’ lawyers said last week that Minasian’s release is the reason why the authorities decided to prosecute the 36-year-old judge working at the court of first instance of southeastern Syunik province. The prosecutors deny this.
“I just find no words to describe what happened,” one of the lawyers, Yerem Sargsian, told reporters after the Yerevan court allowed the pre-trial arrest of his client.
Bakhshiyan is accused of illegally arresting a defendant in an ongoing trial presided over by him after the latter failed to attend a court hearing in December. The prosecutors say that the defendant, Nver Mkrtchian, was absent for legitimate reasons and should have remained free.
Incidentally, Mkrtchian had earlier given incriminating testimony against Manvel Paramazian, the opposition-linked mayor of the Syunik town of Kajaran arrested last summer on corruption charges rejected by him as politically motivated.
Bakhshiyan freed Paramazian on bail in November. But the latter was arrested again on Monday after Armenia’s Court of Appeals overturned the decision made by the embattled judge.
Bakhshiyan’s lawyers point out that the prosecutors did not appeal against his subsequent decision to arrest Mkrtchian. They also say that judges cannot be prosecuted for their decisions made in good faith.
The leadership of Armenia’s Union of Judges echoed these arguments in a statement issued on February 2. The statement expressed serious concern over the criminal proceedings launched against Bakhshiyan, saying that they put judicial independence in the country at serious risk.
Bakhshiyan also received the backing of eight other judges of the Syunik court. In a joint statement released on February 4, they described their colleague as a true professional and a man of integrity.
Independent legal experts also questioned the credibility of the accusations leveled against the judge.
“The work of a judge can only be [legally] evaluated by a superior judicial body,” said Hayk Martirosian of the Armenian branch of the anti-corruption group Transparency International.
Ara Ghazarian, a prominent lawyer and expert on international law, insisted, for his part, that Bakhshiyan did not break the law when he controversially ordered the defendant’s arrest in December.
“In the history of Armenia, there has never been before a case where a judge is prosecuted for ordering an arrest during an ongoing trial,” Ghazarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
In recent months, Armenian opposition groups, lawyers and some judges have accused Pashinian’s government of seeking to increase government influence on Armenian courts under the guise of judicial reforms. The authorities deny this, insisting that the reforms are aimed at increasing judicial independence.