A1+ journalist to go to higher court (video)
The Court of General Jurisdiction of Yerevan’s Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts today rejected the appeal of A1+’s journalist Marine Khachatryan against a decision of a SIS investigator, who decided to terminate proceedings in last year’s assault case outside the National Assembly due to lack of corpus delicti. On September 9, 2014, after members of the Hakaharvats (Counter Attack) street art group hung a banner reading “Hello Rob” (Rob referring to Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan) on the National Assembly’s main gate, the chief of the NA security Karen Hayrapetyan came out and tore down the banner. Then he hit A1+’s journalist Marine Khachatryan, who was covering the incident, on the arm, causing her to drop her recording device – iPad – to the ground. Karen Hayrapetyan then tried to hit the journalist for a second time but he missed her. Karen Hayrapetyan continued to hinder her work even after the journalist introduced herself. At the previous session, Prosecutor Hakob Yenokyan announced that Karen Hayrapetyan had not hit the journalist intentionally. Today, he did not even wait for court’s decision. Marine Khachatryan is going to appeal the decision in a higher court.
