YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am) — A court in Yerevan found Hrayr Tovmasyan, the former chairman of Armenia’s Constitutional Court, guilty of charges rejected by him as politically motivated at the end of his marathon trial on Friday, September 20.
Tovmasyan avoided a prison sentence because of the statute of limitations. However, he will likely be ousted from the court if the guilty verdict is upheld by higher courts.
Tovmasyan was indicted in December 2019 after he and most other Constitutional Court justices rejected Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s demands to resign. Pashinyan accused them of maintaining close ties to Armenia’s former government and impeding his “judicial reforms.” His critics countered that he is only keen to purge the judiciary in order to cement grip on power.
Pashinyan and his political team eventually succeeded in significantly changing the court’s composition through constitutional amendments controversially passed by the Armenian parliament in 2020. The amendments forced Tovmasyan to quit as court chairman but remain a judge.
His trial continued in the meantime. It accelerated dramatically in recent weeks as a result of what critics see as heightened government pressure on the presiding judge, Tatevik Grigoryan.
