The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), which is headed by a political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, claimed that the judge, Anna Danibekian, failed to “efficiently” administer justice in what it described as “one of the most important cases in the history of judicial practice of Armenia.”
Kocharian, who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, was arrested shortly after Pashinian came to power in 2018. He initially faced coup charges stemming from a 2008 post-election crackdown on opposition protesters in Yerevan and was subsequently also charged with bribery.
Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired army generals, went on trial in 2019. They all rejected the accusations as politically motivated.
The coup charges against the defendants were dropped after Armenia’s Constitutional Court declared them unconstitutional in 2021. Kocharian and Gevorgian continued to stand trial for the alleged bribery.
Danibekian closed that case on December 27 without acquitting or convicting Kocharian. She argued that the ex-president invoked the statute of limitations that expired in May 2023.
Less than two months later, the SJC disseminated an incriminating video commissioned by its pro-government chairman, Karen Andreasian. The video purported to explain the “collapse” of the corruption trials of Kocharian, another ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, as well as three other former officials. It put the blame on the judges who presided over those trials.
Armenia’s Union of Judges condemned the release of the footage as a gross violation of legal provisions banning any pressure on judges and interference in their work.
The video was at the heart of the Justice Ministry demands for the SJC to take disciplinary action against Danibekian. The SJC backed the ministry’s claim that the judge should not have held a single trial on the two criminal cases against Kocharian and that she also failed to prevent the ex-president from dragging out the trial.
“Judge Danibekian contributed to the expiration of the statute of limitations in the case of Robert Kocharyan and to the termination of the criminal proceedings against him,” it said in a decision read out by Andreasian.
Danibekian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that she will not comment on the decision for now. The judge was due to present her arguments at an SJC hearing last week. However, the judicial watchdog did not allow her to do that on the grounds that she was five minutes late for the session.
Danibekian’s removal from the bench is bound to stoke claims by Armenian opposition leaders and legal experts that Pashinian’s government is seeking to further curb judicial independence in the country under the guise of Western-backed “judicial reforms.” The government denies that.
Speaking during a November 2023 cabinet meeting, Pashinian complained about what he described as the slow pace of ongoing trials of former Armenian officials. Andreasian said shortly afterwards that he has told his staffers to shoot a video on “the five most famous cases” which would identify “the culprits among law enforcement agencies and judges” and be used for taking disciplinary action against them.
Andreasian served as justice minister and was a member of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party before being installed as SJC chairman in 2022. The number of disciplinary proceedings against judges initiated by the Ministry of Justice has increased significantly since then.
The SJC has sacked scores of judges as a result. One of them, Davit Harutiunian, was removed from the bench in July 2023 after saying that the SJC arbitrarily fires his colleagues at the behest of a single person.