YEREVAN.- Armenian second President Robert Kocharyan’s son Sedrak Kocharyan has been charged by the National Security Service with money laundering.

In an interview to 2rd.am, Sedrak Kocharyan  noted that he has stayed far from public activities for years with clear reasons. His public activity both in the period of defense of his father, and after it could have been commented differently and he had no wish of it. 

“It is a matter of character and style,” he said, adding that now time has come to review his approach to prevent the attempts to confuse the people for them to listen to the other side and then make conclusions.

According to him, the talks regarding him are partially true. “I have received calls from different places asking me whether I have been detained. But as you see the information about my detention is not true but charges have been brought against me,” he said, adding that days ago the NSS charged him days ago over a false case – money laundering, tax evasion and chose signature bond on not leaving the country as a prevention measure.

“I do not hide that what happens now does not surprise me. Nikol Pashinyan has focused on our family still from the years of his journalistic activity and later with an accentuated strength after March events when he fled the square leaving the people at the mercy of fate,” he stressed.

Sedrak Kocharyan stressed that unfortunately a person ready to use any means for reaching his goals has become country’s leader. He noted that people’s dissatisfaction capitalized on satisfaction of the wish one person to see personal revenge. Sedrak Kocharyan also exressed conviction that the people will not forgive the lies and attempts to serve the people’s movement for narrow personal purposes.

“The only tool Nikol has is ensuring cheap scenes and the goal is to keep the power at any cost. But people started demanding concrete answers and actions. I have no doubts that time will out everything at its place,” he said.

By Harut Sassounian,

The US government recently created a new and unnecessary controversy, this time with the Republic of Armenia.

It all started when the Armenian government decided to send a non-combat humanitarian squad of 83 doctors, sappers, and other servicemen to Syria to provide assistance to the important, but dwindling Armenian community in Aleppo. Armenia had previously sent four airlifts of humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people.

A Russian cargo plane flew the Armenian squad to Aleppo on February 8. Apparently, this small role played by Russia was enough to provoke the ire of the cold-warriors in Washington. On February 13, the US Embassy in Armenia released an announcement by the State Department criticizing the dispatch of the Armenian humanitarian squad to Syria.

“We do not support any engagement with Syrian military forces, whether that engagement is to provide assistance to civilians or is military in nature. Nor do we support any cooperation between Armenia and Russia for this mission,” stated the State Department.

This statement antagonized not only the Armenian government, but also the population of Armenia which the United States has been trying to win over in recent years. More importantly, this provocative US statement irritated the large Armenian-American community.

The Armenian squad’s involvement in Syria was based on several factors:

1)    Syria’s Arabs had played a critical role by providing a life-saving refuge to the remnants of the Armenian Genocide, including this writer’s grandparents. It is only fitting that the Armenian government and all Armenians reciprocate to Syria’s goodwill by coming to the rescue of the destitute local Armenians and Syrians in general.

2)    The Armenian government has sent the humanitarian squad based on an inter-state agreement signed by Armenia and Syria in 2001. Therefore, this action is not only of a humanitarian nature, but also complies with requirements of international law.

3)    The United States, on the other hand, has dispatched its Air Force and soldiers to Syria without the approval of the Syrian government, thus violating all relevant international laws. This illegal action is not committed by Armenia, but by the United States.

4)    The Trump Administration and particularly hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton have been striving to distance Armenia from Russia and draw it closer to the American sphere of influence. Regrettably, criticizing the Armenian government’s humanitarian aid to its compatriots in Syria does not endear the United States to Armenians. Just the opposite, it antagonizes Armenians worldwide. The US position simply reflects a poor knowledge of the realities in the Middle East by Trump officials. It makes no sense to try to compel Armenia to desist from sending a humanitarian squad to Syria, knowing full well that such pressure will be rejected, making the American government look weak and ineffective. US officials should have the wisdom to know when to exert their influence and when not to. In this particular case, pressuring Armenia was counter-productive; it only served to strengthen the influence of Russia. Fortunately, such a minor issue will not undermine the friendly relationship between the United States and Armenia. Armenians understand that the US displeasure is more directed towards Russia and Iran than to Armenia itself. The US government is well aware that Armenian troops have participated in international peacekeeping missions, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Lebanon.

5)    The United States government has lost its moral authority to lecture Armenians on any subject given the fact that successive US Presidents in recent decades have refused to utter the term Armenian Genocide under pressure from the despotic Turkish regime.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan reacted to the State Department’s statement by declaring that “throughout the Syrian conflict the plight of civilians, minorities, including the sizable Syrian-Armenian community has consistently been a priority concern for the Armenian people worldwide. The Armenian public opinion strongly reflects deep compassion and concern for the sufferings of civilians and the devastation of the country. We speak about a country which has had an indispensable contribution for the survival of the Armenian nation in the wake of the Armenian Genocide.”

Naghdalyan also stated that the deployment of the humanitarian mission to Syria is intended to support the Armenian community in Aleppo. “It is a purely relief mission guided by International Humanitarian Law and [Armenia] coordinates its work with the relief agencies and international partners present on the ground.”

Going a step further, on February 12, Armenia’s Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan announced that the humanitarian mission did not exclude the possibility of deploying combat troops in Syria in the future. However, the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan quickly rejected that possibility, stating that “we have no such plans.”

Americans, Russians, and everyone else should understand that the Armenian government will pursue its national interests regardless of the wishes of other nations. No amount of pressure will deter Armenians from their own objectives.

By Rukmini Callimachi

HASAKA, Syria — More than four years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appealed to the public to help identify the narrator in one of the Islamic State’s best-known videos, showing captured Syrian soldiers digging their own graves and then being shot in the head.

Speaking fluent English with a North American accent, the man would go on to narrate countless other videos and radio broadcasts by the Islamic State, serving as the terrorist group’s faceless evangelist to Americans and other English speakers seeking to learn about its toxic ideology.

Now a 35-year-old Canadian citizen, who studied at a college in Toronto and once worked in information technology at a company contracted by IBM, says he is the anonymous narrator.

That man, Mohammed Khalifa captured in Syria last month by an American-backed militia, spoke in his first interview about being the voice of the 2014 video, known as “Flames of War.” He described himself as a rank-and-file employee of the Islamic State’s Ministry of Media, the unit responsible for publicizing such brutal footage as the beheading of the American journalist James Foley and the burning of a Jordanian pilot.

“No, I don’t regret it,” Mr. Khalifa said from a prison in northeastern Syria. “I was asked the same thing by my interrogators, and I told them the same thing.”

A thin, diminutive man who occasionally broke into a grin during the hourslong conversation with The New York Times, Mr. Khalifa said he immigrated as a child from Saudi Arabia to Toronto, where he learned to speak much like a native-born Canadian. He said he had studied computer systems technology and worked for a contracting company before leaving for Syria — drawn to the battlefield by watching YouTube.

Terrorism experts say it is hard to overstate the role his effortless English narration played in bringing the terrorist group’s propaganda to English speakers and luring some of them to its cause.

“His voice is the most recognizable English-speaking voice to have ever appeared in Islamic State propaganda,” said Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London.

To verify Mr. Khalifa’s claim, The Times asked three audio-forensic experts to compare the anonymous voice on the “Flames of War” video with a televised statement by Mr. Khalifa aired in Syria shortly after his capture. Though such analyses are not foolproof, all three experts concluded it was highly likely that Mr. Khalifa was the narrator.

Sexual harassment in front of cameras from Turkish police to the activist

Source: https://www.artigercek.com/haberler/polisten-eylemciye-kameralar-onunde-cinsel-taciz?fbclid=IwAR0Ez630bMsD49uAElU0M2g4TSsuQI8m57OZPLMAteY7esgXEMgA3vZ3qkI

Armenia’s Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan visited the booth presenting Armenian military production at the IDEX 2019 international defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi, spokesperson for the ministry Artstun Hovhannisyan wrote on Facebook.

Davit Tonoyan is on a working visit to the United Arab Emirates where he will participate in the work of the International Defense Exhibition and Conference. He is expected to hold a number of working meetings during his visit.  

The United States need to be given clear explanations on Iran’s vital significance for Armenia, Iranian studies scholars and professors of the Yerevan State University (YSU) said today, commenting on the Washington authorities’ deteriorating relations with the Islamic Republic.

Aharon Vardanyan agreed that the earlier spats between the two states were had never been so essentially impactful for the country.  ”I expect our political elite to have the necessary capacity also now to explain Iran’s vital significance for Armenia,” he said, citing the talks with National Security Advisor John Bolton (who visited Armenia in October) as a successful precedent.

The Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson announced earlier this month that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is travelling to the Islamic Republic in late February, but she did not report further details as to the visit agenda.

According to Vardanyan, the trip should have been arranged much earlier ”to make the positions clear”.

”It is important, first of all, to explain the situation in Armenia in order to give first-hand information to Iran. We do not need any changes in the Armenia-Iran relations, which used be good as it is. What we need now is to build steps on the existing foundation,” he said, stressing also the importance of clarifying Armenia’s position on Artsakh with the United States.

Nver Davtyan called for further efforts to reveal the mutual potential between Iran and Armenia. ”The political task of our authorities should deal with making, first of all, the economic sector transparent and identifiable for entrepreneurs in both countries. I think the prime minister’s visit should focus on the problems hampering the willingness [to develop] the relations between the two sides, ” he said, highlighting the obstacles in the tax legislation, infrastructures and bank transfers.

Davtyan also stressed the need of organizing cognitive meetings between the two countries’ businessmen.