Robert Kocharyan Trial Judge Fired for Failure to Administer Justice

YEREVAN — Armenians Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) has fired a Yerevan court judge on Tuesday for her handling of former President Robert Kocharian’s marathon trial that ended without a verdict last December.

The SJC stated that the judge, Anna Danibekyan, failed to efficiently administer justice in what it described as “one of the most important cases in the history of judicial practice of Armenia.”

Kocharian, who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, was arrested shortly after PM Pashinyan came to power in 2018. He initially faced coup charges stemming from a 2008 post-election crackdown on opposition protesters in Yerevan and was subsequently also charged with bribery.

Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgyan and two retired army generals, went on trial in 2019.

The coup charges against the defendants were dropped after Armenia’s Constitutional Court declared them unconstitutional in 2021. Kocharian and Gevorgyan continued to stand trial for the alleged bribery.

Danibekyan closed that case on December 27 without acquitting or convicting Kocharian. She argued that the ex-president invoked the statute of limitations that expired in May 2023.

Less than two months later, the SJC disseminated an incriminating video commissioned by its chairman, Karen Andreasyan. The video purported to explain the “collapse” of the corruption trials of Kocharian, another ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, as well as three other former officials. It put the blame on the judges who presided over those trials.
The video was at the heart of the Justice Ministry demands for the SJC to take disciplinary action against Danibekian. The SJC backed the ministry’s claim that the judge should not have held a single trial on the two criminal cases against Kocharian and that she also failed to prevent the ex-president from dragging out the trial.

“Judge Danibekyan contributed to the expiration of the statute of limitations in the case of Robert Kocharyan and to the termination of the criminal proceedings against him,” it said in a decision read out by Andreasyan.