Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

Yesterday, on October 4, 2018, Lori Region General Jurisdiction Court held the examination of Kristine Mkhitaryan’s claim, with which she demanded compensation from lawyer Artak Voskanyan for insulting and slandering her in the courtroom.

The incident took place on November 27, 2017, when Kristine Mkhitaryan was being interrogated in the Court as a witness for another case and lawyer Artak Voskanyan was involved as a defender and gave questions to the witness.

 Once again, defendant Artak Voskanyan did not appear before the court during the court session yesterday. According to the Court’s information, he received the notice of the court session in June, 2018, but neither appeared before the Court, nor requested to postpone the court session.

Plaintiff Kristine Mkhitaryan and her representative – HCA Vanadzor lawyer - Arayik Zalyan took part in the court session.

The latter presented the grounds and the subject of the claim and since Artak Voskanyan mentioned in his response to the claim that he did not understand what the plaintiff considered insult and slander, Arayik Zalyan made clarifications on it.  Arayik Zalyan also presented dictionary extracts concerning the expressions made by Artak Voskanyan which the plaintiff considered as insult. The Court suggested presenting clarifications of the claim in a written form and with that purpose the representative of the plaintiff was provided with 20 minutes’ time.

Having received the clarifications in a written form, the Court considered it necessary to give the defendant an opportunity to familiarize with them. Arayik Zalyan also shared the same opinion.

The Court session was postponed and the next session was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. on November 20, 2018.

It should be mentioned that the Court forbade taking photos of the court session reasoning that it was necessary to ask the opinions of all the sides, but since the defendant had not appeared before the Court, it was impossible to know his opinion.