Calls to Reject Candidacy of Armen Harutyunyan as Judge at ECHR

Armen Harutyunyan.

Armenia’s Committee on the Election of Judges to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) conducted two separate selection processes (September-October, 2014 and January-February 2015)  for the position of judge to the ECHR representing Armenia.

During the first selection process, the candidates were Armen Harutyunyan, UN’s Regional Representative for Central Asia and former Ombudsman; Ara Ghazaryan, member of the Rule of Law NGO and Nelik Harutyunyan, Head of the International-Legal Relations Division of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The ECHR refused the candidacy of Nelik Harutyunyan, stating that her credentials were not sufficient. Thus, the Armenian side brought in lawyer Liana Hakobyan as an alternate candidate.

During the June 9-10 session of the Committee on the Election of Judges to the ECHR, the Committee recommended the candidature of Armen Harutyunyan.

A number of civil society organizations and community of lawyers, including Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center issued a statement today addressed to PACE. The statement says that the Human Rights NGO Europe in Law Association (ELA) carried out monitoring during the two national contests for the selection of the candidates and found breaches and non-compliance of the selected candidate in accordance to Article 21 of the ECHR in its respective reports published in 2014 and 2015.

The statement said that there was favoritism toward Armen Harutyunyan by the Committee and they had proof of plagiarism on behalf of Harutyunyan “as well as well-substantiated information on the inadequate level of his other important professional and moral qualities.”

During the 2015 selection process, the Committee did not publish the applications submitted by the candidates to observers. Piecing together the information available, observation of the National Selection Commission sessions, interviews with the candidates including a number of publications, made  the selection process not only non-transparent but also underscored the incompetence of the selected candidates for the position of ECHR judge, the statement read.

The letter to PACE by CSOs and lawyers goes on to state:

“The National Selection Commission was not a politically independent and impartial professional body, as the majority of its members were either controlled or significantly influenced by one political party (the ruling Republican Party of Armenia), the aim of this being to ensure the election of Armen Harutyunyan for the position of an ECtHR judge; the list of the three candidates for the position of an ECtHR judge, was  drawn as a result of serious violations of the transparency and fairness of the contest;  all the three candidates failed to meet the requirements of Article 21 of the ECHR.”

Armen Harutyunyan, allegedly plagiarized the works of two Russian authors, S. Kashkin and B. Topornin and used passages from books edited by them without making proper references to the originals, “literally copying and pasting numerous pages into his books on the European Union Law published in 2005 and 2011. This proof of academic dishonesty, even if we discard the rest in the mentioned reports, leaves no room for considering this candidate as conforming to the criteria for an ECHR judge,” the statement went on to say.

The signatories of the letter to PACE are calling on the Assembly therefore to reject the full list of candidates presented by Armenia.

“We believe that no one must be allowed to hold this important position in this Court commonly referred to as ‘Conscience of Europe’ by means of availing oneself of the procedural and formal rules without complying with the moral and professional requirements of Article 21 of ECHR, thereby manifestly undermining by his/her past the reputation and legitimacy of the Court before the people of Europe. Judges to this Court must be elected indeed and not be imposed under such circumstances,” the statement concludes.

This is the third time since independence that the Republic of Armenia is submitting a list of candidates for judge of the European Court of Human RIghts. In the past, Armenia submitted list of candidates in 2003 and 2009. At that time, the Republic of Armenia did not have in place a clear procedure for the selection of candidates and thus, they were appointed by the president of the country. On August 2, 2014, a commission was established by a decree and  the Procedure for the Functioning of the Commission for the Selection of the Candidates for the Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Armenia and the Selection of Candidates was approved. Under the Procedure, the Commission must hold a contest for the selection of the candidates to be submitted to PACE guided by the principles of fairness and transparency.