The Armenian Ministry of Justice petitioned the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) last month to take disciplinary action against the judge, Davit Harutiunian, after he claimed that the SJC arbitrarily fires his colleagues at the behest of a single person. The state watchdog headed by Karen Andreasian, a political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, sacked Harutiunian on Monday.
Opposition figures and lawyers portrayed the move as further proof that Pashinian’s government is seeking to further curb judicial independence in Armenia under the guise of Western-backed “judicial reforms.”
“The Judicial Code stipulates that a judge has no right to criticize another judicial body, which in this case was the Supreme Judicial Council,” Minasian countered as he answered questions from Facebook users at the RFE/RL studio in Yerevan.
“If a judge … has been fine and happy with the judicial system for 12 years and started making statements only after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him or his friend, I see a conflict of interest here,” he said, accusing Harutiunian of “caring only about his own skin.”
Harutiunian’s ouster highlighted the Armenian authorities’ growing recourse to punitive measures against judges. The practice was facilitated by a 2021 law which Andreasian helped to enact in his previous capacity as justice minister. The number of disciplinary proceedings against judges has risen sharply in the last two years.
Last December, the SJC controversially fired a judge married to a vocal critic of the government. Another Yerevan judge, Zaruhi Nakhshkarian, openly criticized Anahit Pilosian’s sacking. Nakhshkarian lost her job as a result. Her removal was also initiated by the Ministry of Justice.
Andreasian terminated his membership in Pashinian’s Civil Contract party shortly before taking over as SJC chairman last October. Minasian succeeded him as justice minister. The two men are close friends, according to some media reports. They were spotted meeting at a café in Yerevan on June 23, after the formal launch of the disciplinary proceedings against Harutiunian.
The SJC is a supposedly independent body that nominates judges, monitors their work and can fire them.