“In a highly controversial but anticipated ruling, a Yerevan court on Monday sentenced Gagik Jahangirian, a former deputy prosecutor-general linked to the Armenian opposition, to three years in prison for allegedly resisting police during his arrest last year,” RFE/RL reports. Watching Jhangiryan demanding justice, I could not help, but smile at the irony of the situation. Jhangiryan, formerly also Armenia’s chief military prosecutor, knows very well what the Armenian law-enforcement and judicial systems are capable of. As RFE/RL puts it: “Jahangirian himself was accused of resorting to torture and committing other human rights abuses during his decade-long tenure as Armenia’s chief military prosecutor.”
Such allegations marred, in particular, the criminal investigation into the October 1999 deadly seizure of the Armenian parliament led by Jahangirian.
Jahangirian also presided over the extremely controversial prosecution of three Armenian army conscripts arrested in 2004 on charges of murdering two fellow soldiers in Nagorno-Karabakh. One of those conscripts claimed to have been brutally tortured into falsely confessing to the charges. The three young men were sensationally set free by Armenia’s Court of Appeals in December 2006, just seven months after being sentenced to life imprisonment.
Sadly though, Jhangiryan is not sentenced for 3 years because of all the evil he has caused while on high government posts. He is being sentenced to 3 years for what appears to be ridiculously falsified charges and only because on February 23, 2008 he voiced support for the opposition. And while one hopes, that the Armenian juduciaries will learn a lesson by Jhangiryan’s sentencing, a lesson that would teach them to commit themselves to true justice, for one day they might seek justice, and be denied it like the deputy ex-prosecutor did, I’m not sure that’s what they’ll learn.