On January 26, during a regular session in the Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction, the lawyers of human rights defender Sashik Sultanyan filed a petition in order to obtain permission for their client to be absent from the country on February 5-15 to participate in discussions on the protection of the rights of national minorities with representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament. The Court granted the petition and proceeded to consider the evidence in the main case.

Sultanyan is accused under the first paragraph of the second part of Article 226 of the Criminal Code of Armenia (Incitement of national, racial or religious enmity, openly or using the media). According to the article, the statement about the violation of the rights of Yezidis in Armenia was qualified as inciting national enmity.

The interests of the head of the Yezidi Center for Human Rights, Sashik Sultanyan, are represented by Samson Galstyan, lawyer of the Vanadzor office of the Helsinki Civil Assembly, and Ara Gazaryan, lawyer.

The petition of the defenders filed at the previous meeting concerned an appeal to the Constitutional Court to determine the constitutionality of the article. However, the court considered it appropriate to consider this issue after the evidence had been examined.

So, the prosecutor presented written evidence - a translation of the conversation (which formed the basis of the criminal case) and excerpts from the wiretapping of the phone.

Ghazaryan's lawyer stated that the prosecution against Sultanyan began before there were grounds for initiating a criminal case, so it can be assumed that the prosecution is related to his human rights activities.

The National Security Service began listening to Sashik Sultanyan in April 2020 - 5 months before the criminal case appeared. Wiretapping began in connection with the report of a counterintelligence officer of the National Security Service on suspicion of overthrowing the constitutional order, in the absence of data on any relevant actions of Sultanyan. The Service initiates this kind of persecution only in relation to spies and terrorists. Over the past 5 months, of course, no evidence of the crime imputed to him has been found. Despite this, the statement of the human rights organization says, the report had absolutely no grounds, but the court granted the request to start operational search measures against Sashik Sultanyan, including wiretapping. In fact, the National Security Service qualified Sultanyan's human rights activities as an attempt to forcibly overthrow the constitutional order, the Vanadzor office of the KHA said in a statement.

It turns out that the operational measures were carried out in connection with the suspicion of the violent overthrow of the constitutional order, but the criminal case was opened based on inciting national enmity.

It is also noteworthy that a criminal case was opened in the wake of a message by Narek Malyan, known for his actions aimed at representatives of civil society and activists. It turns out that the National Security Service used an extremely dubious message from Malyan, a well-known opponent of human rights defenders in society, to open a criminal case against human rights defender Sashik Sultanyan.

As stated by the defense, the data obtained from April to August 2020 cannot be acceptable evidence, since they, in addition to being illegal, are not relevant to the charge.

The lawyers also commented on excerpts from the wiretapping. Ara Ghazaryan drew attention to the fact that in the conversation Sultanyan criticizes the authorities of the country, and not the Armenians. And the expression of their opinion, a statement about human rights, is qualified as hate words.

Lawyer Galstyan, in turn, spoke about inaccuracies in the translation of the conversation and attempts to distort the statements of the human rights defender. This was also touched upon by Sashik Sultanyan himself, including noting that the translation was given an additional emotional color by applying specific words in the Armenian version. The fact is that the translation, which formed the basis of the criminal case, was carried out by a person without a translator's certificate. Moreover, the author of the translation, judging by his public negative assessments, had a biased attitude towards Sultanyan's activities. Nevertheless, the prosecutor rejected the defense's request to recognize the translation as inaccurate.

The lawyers once again drew attention to the fact that we are talking about a personal conversation, non-public statements, which the mentioned article does not concern.

The court's examination of the evidence will continue March 10.

epress.am