Is Pashinyan getting rid of Constitutional Court president?

A criminal case was opened against Armenia's Constitutional Court president Hrayr Tovmasyan.

According to the press service of the Armenia's Investigative Committee, information has been ascertained on Tovmasyan’s abuse of official powers.

During the investigation of the criminal case into several officials abusing their official powers during Tovmasyan’s tenure as Armenian Minister of Justice, data were obtained with respect to Tovmasyan's direct involvement in the alleged crimes.

Accordingly, it was substantiated that as a result of an auction organized by the Municipality of Yerevan, an area was actually acquired by him. The respective criminal case has been sent to the Special Investigation Service, News.am reported.

In September, Armenia's Constitutional Court ruled that it is possible to criminally prosecute Armenia's former president, one of the leaders of the Karabakh clan and instigator of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Robert Kocharyan. But at the same time, the court ruled that Article 35 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Basis for Execution of Preventive measures), that is Kocharyan's arrest, was unconstitutional.

In early October, the Criminal Court of Appeal of Armenia has decided not to consider the appeal by Kocharyan’s legal defendants against the decision to not commute his pretrial measure of custody, arguing that the aforementioned decision is not subject to appeal, according to the judicial information system.

The writer, journalist, Vesti FM radio station host Armen Gasparyan, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that persecution of Tovmasyan appears to be political, not criminal. "I am inclined to believe that this is largely part of the process that is usually called the change of elites. This is not the first such case in Armenia in the last year, and I think this is not the last," he suggested.

"You must admit that the criminal case against the president of the Constitutional Court is already an extraordinary event, more reminiscent of the Ukrainian scenario. By the way, the CampCamp conference of the Czech company Prague Civil Society, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, took place in Armenia last year. The same CampCamp conference was held in Moldova this year, and now about the same events as in Armenia have started there, so I have doubts whether this is just all part of some unified training manual, which was already tested in Ukraine," the Vesti FM host stressed.

"In general, Nikol Pashinyan, setting up the case of the ex-president of Armenia, showed that this is a political case in the first place. Most likely, anyone else will fall into these wheels of justice," Armen Gasparyan expects.