Photographer and photojournalist German Avagyan has passed away aged 59, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Arayik Harutyunyan said on social media.
Today at around 7 p.m. contractual serviceman of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) Hayk Asryan (born in 1997) received a fatal firearm injury in unknown circumstances in the maintenance station of one of the military units of the Defense Army stationed in the eastern direction, as reported the news service of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Artsakh.
President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian has departed to Germany to participate in the Munich Security Conference.
Armenian defense ministry spokesperson Artsrun Hovhannisyan informed on Facebook that one more soldier, Tigran Mkhoyan, has also been killed.
“First of all, ‘word game’ is not a word that the VC uses. The word was twisted. However, first of all, I would like to state the truth. I’m not a government official and am not very concerned about Armenia’s relations with international partners. I’m also not a Member of Parliament or a member of the political team to be concerned about the parliamentary diplomacy, etc. I’m a judge of the Constitutional Court, and I would like to be very sincere to citizens in my response to the question. First of all, the impartiality of certain officials of the VC regarding this and other issues isn’t very unequivocal for me,” Vahe Grigoryan said.
President of the Venice Commission Gianni Buquicchio has issued another statement on the events surrounding the Constitutional Court and calls on the parties to show restraint, and this statement has been the topic of discussions in the Armenian domain of Facebook since last evening.
Party of Armenia: · Acknowledges that the entire responsibility for the process thus initiated is borne by Nikol Pashinyan, as well as all persons involved in this, yet another, act of state capture; ·
“The Armenian Parliament decided to hold an extraordinary session on 6 February in order to discuss a series of amendments that would remove the requirement for the Constitutional Court to check the compliance of draft legislation with the Constitution of Armenia. Among other things, this would change the procedure of revision of the Constitution itself. In addition, a constitutional amendment that seems to aim at ending the terms of several members of the current Constitutional Court with immediate effect has been tabled,” said the co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the monitoring of Armenia, Andrej Šircelj (Slovenia, EPP/CD) and Kimmo Kiljunen (Finland, SOC).
Late last night, the Court of Appeals, presided over by Judge Sergey Marabyan, examined the lawyers’ appeal against the detention of former Minister of Finance and SRC Chairman Gagik Khachatryan. After the session, Yerem Sargsyan, member of the Khachatryans’ legal team, told the reporters that state law enforcement bodies violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights in Khachatryan’s case.
I would like to recall the recommendations made in the opinion of the Venice Commission adopted in October 2019 that any early retirement scheme at the Constitutional Court has to remain truly voluntary, exclude any undue political or personal pressure on the judges concerned and must be designed not to influence the outcome of pending cases.
