Yerevan, April 3 2009.

On Friday, April 3, the press conference war held regarding the legal persecution of attorneys Ara Zakaryan, Artur Grigoryan and Dianna Grigoryan.

Attorneys Ara Zakaryan, Artur Grigoryan and Dianna Grigoryan are the defenders of Gevorg Safaryan and Anush Ghavalyan, blamed for tax evasion within the so-called case of Pizza de Roma.

The mentioned case has been examined in Yerevan Criminal Court by judge Yeva Darbinyan since June 24, 2008 (at present a judge of RA Court of Appeals). According to the attorneys, she has committed a number of official crimes within the mentioned case, including two official forgeries. In particular, the judge counterfeited two court decisions, one of which was backdated.

The attorneys tried to use all the legal measures to prevent the criminal actions of the judge and restore the infringed rights and freedoms of their defendants. However, those were completely ignored by the same judge.

In a similar situation, the attorneys, deprived of any other legal means for defense, were forced to use the only left option for expressing their grievance and left the court room. Later, they submitted a communication to RA Prosecutor’s Office, Chair of RA Court of Cassation and other officials about the abuse of power by the judge.

With an aim of contravening and concealing the abuse, judge Davit Avetisyan, (then acting Chair of RA Court of Cassation) separated, copied and sent one of the documents forged by judge Y. Darbinyan and submitted within the package of appeal of attorneys to the Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan. It was supposed to provide grounds for opening a criminal case against attorneys for demonstration of their disrespect to the court. Prosecutor General, apparently in agreement with D. Avetisyan, enclosed this document to the package submitted by attorneys and sent to the investigation unit of the police, well knowing that police investigators are not eligible to conduct examination for the behavior of the judge.

In the created situation against this backdrop criminal case is opened not against the official crimes conducted by the judge, but against the attorneys for showing disrespect for the court. Moreover, Samvel Hovhannisyan, the investigator of Arabkir District Investigation Unit already mentioned that he is going to lay a charge against the attorneys.

All these actions are committed with one aim – to secure the judge from criminal persecution as the latter is the implementer of higher orders (which is confirmed by a number of facts). This is the answer to the question why we do not have an independent judiciary and instead maintain a highly corrupt prosecution-judicial system, inherited from fraudulent Soviet times and veiled with a new decoration. While, during the last 10 years millions of dollars were allocated to our country for judicial and legal reforms in order to abolish the mentioned corrupt practices.