Members of the Armenian parliament representing the former ruling party on Thursday initiated a probe into possible “obstruction of justice” following a wiretapping scandal involving two top security officials that broke out earlier this week.
Parliament Speaker Ara Babloyan said that as required by the Constitution a quarter of lawmakers asked him to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the wiretapped telephone conversations between National Security Service (NSS) Director Artur Vanetsian and Special Investigation Service (SIS) head Sasun Khachatrian concerning the ongoing investigation into the 2008 postelection violence in which 10 people were killed.
According to some lawmakers, the conversations reveal that the two officials may have obstructed justice. The matter concerns the mention of a “terrified judge” who allegedly contacted the NSS chief over the case of former Armenian President Robert Kocharian.
Kocharian, who faces charges of breaching the constitution in connection with the March 1-2, 2008 case, on Wednesday publicly accused the current administration, and Vanetsian and Khachatrian in particular, of pursuing a “politically motivated” case against him. Citing the telephone conversations between the two officials, he claimed that the goal of the investigation was to “lock him up” and said that the NSS and SIS heads should resign.
At their joint press conference on September 11 both Vanetsian and Khachatrian insisted that their conversations did not reveal anything that could be used to accuse them or Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of guiding the judiciary.
Members of the pro-Pashinian Yelk faction in the National Assembly, which is still dominated by members of the former ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), argued today that the launching of a probe was superfluous since along with the case on the fact of the wiretapping of telephone conversations of senior officials the Prosecutor-General’s Office on Wednesday also launched another criminal probe, instructing the Investigation Committee to investigate possible “exceeding of official authorities” by Vanetsian and Khachatrian.
Under Armenia’s constitution and parliament regulations, a parliamentary probe cannot be conducted on cases that are being investigated by investigation bodies or are at the stage of judicial examination.
“This probe will exert pressure on and will influence the criminal case,” said Yelk lawmaker Alen Simonian, stressing that the law prohibits the establishment of a parliamentary investigation committee if there is a criminal case pursued by a relevant body.
HHK faction members, meanwhile, disagreed with this argument, insisting that the committee will probe circumstances that are not part of the criminal case pursued by the investigation committee, in particular, it will try to establish whether there was any pressure on the judge mentioned in one of the telephone conversations of the two officials.
HHK faction member Armen Ashotian further claimed that the Prosecutor-General’s Office initiated a criminal case on the possible official misconduct by the top NSS and SIS officials only to preclude a parliamentary probe.
“What are you afraid of?” Ashotian asked rhetorically. “Stop feeding us with lies. The parliament has powers. One should not be afraid of the activities of the parliament. The work of this committee should not be political.”
Ashotian also suggested that all sittings of the committee be broadcast live to ensure maximum transparency of the probe.
Other HHK lawmakers argued that a parliamentary probe is essential also in the general context of human rights in Armenia.
Remarkably, deputy speaker of parliament and HHK faction member Arpine Hovhannisian also raised the Armenian wiretapping scandal at the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg on September 11.
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