Armenia’s Constitutional Court Head Indicted

“It’s no secret to any of you that in the last six and seven months the Constitutional Court has worked under unprecedented pressures,” he said. “Those pressures have involved not only insults, threats and warnings about [what happened] today but also concrete calls for violence.”

In late October, Armenia’s Investigative Committee claimed to have collected sufficient evidence that Tovmasyan abused his powers when he served as justice minister. The committee sent the case to the SIS for further investigation.

Tovmasyan’s lawyers categorically rejected the committee’s allegations at the time. One of them, Amram Makinian, on Friday described the accusations brought against the Constitutional Court chairman as “political persecution.”

The SIS announced its decision to question Tovmasyan on Thursday just hours after President Armen Sarkissian signed into law a controversial government bill giving Constitutional Court judges financial incentives to resign before the end of their mandate.

The bill, passed by the parliament earlier this month, applies to seven of the court’s nine judges who were installed by Armenia’s former governments. It was drafted by the Armenian Justice Ministry in August shortly after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan implicitly demanded the resignation of those judges and Tovmasyan in particular.

Pashinyan has repeatedly accused them of maintaining links with Armenia’s former leadership and impeding reforms which he says are aimed at creating a “truly independent judiciary.” His critics claim that he is on the contrary seeking to gain control over all courts.