ArmInfo. Armenian second president Robert Kocharyan's office has made a statement in connection with the scandalous audio message of the conversation between the director of the National Security Service and the head of the SIS.
The statement in particularly reads: "As it is known today, on September 11, recording of a phone conversation between Director of Armenia's National Security Service Artur Vanetsyan and Head of Special Investigation Service Sasun Khachatryan was spread on the internet, in which they discussed the criminal case of March 1, particularly the arrest of Robert Kocharyan and CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov. Based on the content of the conversations, it is necessary to state several important circumstances, about which we have repeatedly stated:
1. Political persecution is carried out against Robert Kocharyan, which is directed personally by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The conversation between the director of NSS and the head of the SIS leaves no doubt about this.
2. Judging from the audio recordings, initially the goal was not to disclose the "March 1" case and find the guilty ones, but only to arrest (or as the interlocutors said "to close") President Kocharyan, which is a classic example of a political vendetta.
3. The judge of the first instance who made a judgment on arrest was under severe pressure from the authorities and took an illegal decision dictated to him from above.
4. The measure of restraint in respect of Robert Kocharyan and Yuri Khachaturov was chosen with the direct consent by Nikol Pashinyan.
All of this is a crime with the participation of high-ranking officials. Statements by the Prime Minister as well as the Heads of SIS and NSS that followed the publication of the record are nothing more than failed attempts to justify themselves.
It is important to emphasize that these telephone conversations not only reveal an episode related to a particular case, but also the whole essence of the current regime, the real face of the acting authorities. People who scream from morning till night about love and tolerance, non-interference in justice, take quite the opposite actions, deceiving and misleading the public. People who talk about democracy in the most brutal way violate democratic freedoms and human rights.
I consider it necessary to emphasize the following: it is clear from the statement of the Prime Minister, the Director of the National Security Service and the Head of the SIS that, seeing that through a falsified case it is impossible to arrest Kocharyan and remove him from the political field, and also making sure that rumors of Kocharyan's illegal enrichment and mythical capital does not correspond to reality, the authorities resorted to a new method, saying that Kocharyan's family was laundering money.
Let the society decide what these statements made by the participants of known telephone conversations worth. But it is obvious that the political persecution of President Kocharyan continues and enters a new phase. We call upon all our compatriots and friends to soberly assess the situation, the style of the authorities' work, to break the propaganda veil and not allow Armenia from a democratic state to become a country run by amateurs on the basis of the principles of Bolshevism and political repression. "