On April 9, 2009, Sarkis Hatspanian was sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment after being found guilty of “false denunciation” by the Kentron and Nork-Marash District Court, Judge Gagik Avetisyan presiding. The political opposition, especially the HAK (Armenian National Congress) considers Hatspanian, to be a political prisoner. Attorney Hovik Arsenyan is preparing to petition the verdict in the Court of Appeals. In his words, however, they are placing their hopes more on a change of the political reality. Otherwise, he claims, their petition will be refused “because this issue, unfortunately, is more a political case than a legal one”. Sarkis Hatspanian, a French citizen, participated in the Karabakh war. In Armenia, he has represented various diaspora Armenian organizations. He permanently resettled in Armenia with his family in 1990. During the 2008 presidential elections he backed the candidacy of Levon Ter-Petrosyan and was a prominent figure at Freedom Square after the contested elections. He slept in a tent pitched in the square along with other activists. He declared a four day hunger strike that he only ended upon the urging of Ter-Petrosyan. Sarkis Hatspanian gave a number of speeches at Freedom Square in which he strongly criticized the ruling regime. At the February 27 rally, he announced that the police had tried to search his home but that his wife and child didn’t let them in. Later on Sarkis Hatspanian told one of the papers that as of February 24, after each of his speeches, top police officials would approach him at least twice a day and invite him down to police headquarters for a “talk”. “I’d tell them that if their invitation was made in accordance with the laws of Armenia I wouldn’t have any problem with it and would immediately appear,” Mr. Hatspanian stated. The Police then presented a prosecutorial claim to the administrative court regarding a number of individuals, including Sarkis Hatspanian, involved in the events of February 28 to March 3. The claim demanded that the individuals specified should be subjected to administrative sanction for “violating the codes pertaining to staging rallies, meetings, marches and demonstrations”. Mr. Hatspanian was fined in the amount of five times his minimum salary. Even though a warrant for his arrest hadn’t been issued, Mr. Hatspanian went into hiding after March 1. In a July 2008 press interview he explained his actions. “Even though I was called by the Prosecutor’s Office as more a suspect than the average witness, it is only one step to turning a suspect into a defendant. And once coming out of hiding, isn’t it clear what will happen to someone who is a foreign citizen,” he asks. While still on the run, Mr. Hatspanian told the press that on the morning of March 1 he was beaten to a pulp by special detachment forces and that as a result, “It took me three weeks to get back on my feet and five to regain my normal composure. From that day on I’ve been in the liberated territories.” Mr. Hatspanian returned to his home in Yerevan on October 6. He and his family shut the doors to their apartment to any and all outsiders since law enforcement officials were constantly milling about outside. It turns out that as far back as March 10, during the declared state of emergency, President Robert Kocharyan had stripped Mr. Hatspanian of his special residency status. Sarkis Hatspanian had first obtained special residency status back in 1990 and it remained in effect until 2006. That same year the status was renewed until 2016. Once having been stripped of that status on the orders of President Kocharyan, from a legal point of view, Mr. Hatspanian’s return to the Republic of Armenia was construed as an illegal crossing of the border. Based on this ruse, the RoA Police Department’s Central Division slapped Mr. Hatspanian with a 50,000 dram fine. In addition, President Kocharyan’s directive demanded that Mr. Hatspanian had to leave Armenia within five days. This gave rise to rumors that he was to be deported from Armenia. Soon afterwards, a number of intellectuals, organizations and opposition groups came out in defense of Hatspanian, demanding an immediate end to the political persecution of one of Artsakh’s heroes. They underlined the fact that the regime wished to banish Hatspanian for his dissident views. The talk about deporting Hatspanian had started to die down when on November 4, in a statement circulated by the newspaper “Haykakan Zhamanak”, Sarkis Hatspanian announced that plans were underway to assassinate President Serzh Sargsyan. “There are a few possible scenarios. It can come in the form of an airplane accident due to technical problems when the president is travelling overseas. Or else a former disgruntled Dashnak, a second Nairi Hunanyan, can surface in the presidential staff. Then too there’s the possibility that it will be a ‘brave fedayee’ from Artsakh who’s against returning one square inch of land,” Mr. Hatspanian stated at the time. (Editor – On October 27, 1999, Nairi Hunanyan, along with four other gunmen, entered the Armenian Parliament, killing the prime minister, speaker of the parliament and six other officials. Hunanyan had been expelled from the ARF) A case was brought against Hatspanian in the National Security Service based on an article of the RoA Criminal Code dealing with “preparations for killing a state official”. On November 7, 2008, Hatspanian was arrested and was jailed three days later. He was charged with the crime of “false denunciation. The Court of Appeals let stand the decision of the Court of First Instance to keep Hatspanian locked up in preventive custody Attorney Hovik Arsenyan states, “Initiating a criminal case is absurd. If an individual communicates with state bodies or presents a written statement that later turns out to be a denunciation, then Article 333 (False denunciation) of the RoA Criminal Code is applied. All Hatspanian did was give a press interview in which he expressed his suspicions regarding the possibility of a violation being committed against the president. Being patriotic, he raised his concerns in the name of national stability.” On the other hand, in the opinion of the attorney, the absence of an illegal group in the actions of Hatspanian is proven by the decision regarding the initiation of a criminal case. “In it, they wrote that Sarkis Hatspanian wished to display his personal superiority to the political structures. In this case, what criminal investigation are they talking about,” Mr. Arsenyan asks in amazement. For close to one month Sarkis Hatspanian staged a hunger strike while being held at the Vardashen detention facility. He even refused water for the last few days, demanding his release and that of the other political prisoners. This action, like the calls of various individuals and groups for his release, produced no result Sarkis Hatspanian’s case was sent to the courts in March, 2009. During the trial he claimed that the criminal case against him was a fabrication. “How does the investigator know that I consciously lied or that I provided the press with false information? I am ready to prove who actually is giving false denunciation,” Mr. Hatspanian declared in court. In his view, he accused no one in particular but rather simply pointed out those who might have an interest in doing away with President Sargsyan – Robert Kocharyan, the ARF, or foreign lackeys of the Civilitas Foundation created by former foreign minister Vardan Oskanian. When asked why he didn’t inform law enforcement about the impending plot, Mr. Hatspanian answered that, “The only regime I have faith in is the “Chorrord Ishkhanutyun” (Fourth Regime – a newspaper). I gave the paper the information.” Prosecutor Aram Amirzadyan called on the court to sentence Hatspanian to 4.5 years jail time. “This demand was quite strange since the false denunciation “corpus delicti” (body of crime) was disproven during the preliminary examination,” comments defense attorney Arsenyan, adding that, “All three of the primary units of the National Security Service told the examining court that the article in question was abstract in nature and contained no specifics. The criminal charges should have been reduced but certain individuals wanted to extract the maximum punishment possible.” Judge Gagik Avetisyan partially sustained the demand of the prosecution and sentenced Sarkis Hatspanian to 3 ½ years imprisonment. In his final statement Sarkis Hatspanian declared that he committed no criminally punishable crime and that he would appeal any guilty sentence in the European Court.