On October 29, 2004 the Court of Cassation of the Republic of Armenia examined the suit brought by the NGO Investigative Journalists of Armenia against the Office of the Mayor of Yerevan and, to our great surprise, reversed the September 16, 2004 verdict of the Court of Appeal on Civil Cases, sending the case for a new hearing in the same Court of Appeal.

Hetq has reported on the suit against the Mayor's Office, challenging Mayor Yervand Zakharyan's refusal to provide the NGO with the decisions regarding land allocations in the public park surrounding Yerevan's Opera House made from 1997 to 2003 by Zakharyan and his predecessors.

We say "to our great surprise" because the year-long administrative and judicial procrastination made it clear that both the administration of justice and the realization of a journalist's right to obtain information depend on the whim of state agencies and officials.

For a year, the organization's chairman, Edik Baghdasaryan, and lawyer, Ara Zohrabyan, had been quoting the Constitution, the laws of the Republic of Armenia, and international conventions to convince the judges of the validity of their demand, seemingly in vain. Judge Gayane Karakhanyan of the Court of First Instance of the Kentron and Nork-Marash Communities of Yerevan needed no laws or justifications to dismiss the associations complaint-the Mayor's Office's "vindication" was enough for her. Th e presiding judge of the Court of Appeal on Civil Cases, Noyem Hovsepyan, reversed the course of the court proceedings to "find a way out" and to turn down the journalist's request to receive open information.

The Court of Cassation's acceptance of the appeal of the Investigative Journalists means that the verdicts of the other two courts were wrong; the journalists have scored a small, preliminary victory. But it also means that the journalists still will not be able to obtain documents related to an issue of a great social importance any time soon (the new hearing by the Court of Appeal will not begin earlier than two months from now, and when it does begin may take several months). Furthermore, this reversal doesn't guarantee our victory in the Court of Appeal in the second trial.

We would be extremely happy if the decision of the Court of Cassation were indeed a result of a 'spontaneous', unbiased and fair examination. But unfortunately, the information we possess suggests that it was a compulsory decision, or an order from above to put a stop to the judicial farce. The Court of Appeal has two months to decide whether to oblige the Mayor's Office to provide the journalists with the information in question, or to dismiss the appeal again.