{"id":98301,"date":"2011-05-24T15:34:52","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T10:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=98301"},"modified":"2011-05-24T15:35:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T10:35:31","slug":"ara-karapetyan-sentenced-to-15-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/05\/24\/ara-karapetyan-sentenced-to-15-years-in-prison.html","title":{"rendered":"Ara Karapetyan Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan at the Court of General Jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts of Yerevan today sentenced businessman Ara Karapetyan to 15 years of imprisonment \u2014 the length of time prosecutor Hovsep Sargsyan had asked for.<\/p>\n<p>Recall, Ara Karapetyan is one of ten people accused of breaking into the home of and assaulting former chair of the RA State Customs Committee Armen Avetisyan on Oct. 27, 2008.<\/p>\n<p>On Feb. 7 this year, Karapetyan&#8217;s friends and family, who say the accusation is unfounded and demand a fair trial, were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2011\/02\/07\/protesting-outside-presidential-residence-ara-karapetyans-friends-family-trust-armenias-president\/\"><strong><span style=\"color: #000080;\">protesting outside the president\u2019s residence<\/span><\/strong><\/a> in Yerevan. They held placards with inscriptions such as \u201cFreedom to Ara Karapetyan,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t convict without evidence,\u201d and \u201cWe trust the president.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That day, Karapetyan&#8217;s sister Dzovinar, speaking to Epress.am, had said that she &#8220;won&#8217;t permit herself&#8221; to say what are the implication of the charges against her brother and keeping him in a National Security Service cell for two eyars, but in her opinion, there was no political subtext.<\/p>\n<p>Dzovinar had also said she would like to deliver her brother&#8217;s letter to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.<\/p>\n<p>After the ruling was issued today, Karapetyan&#8217;s supporters sent a letter to news outlets, informing the press of the court ruling, as well as noting that &#8220;judging from the fact that the key actor in the March 1 [2008] trials and one of those well-known people who carry out orders was the judge, Matso [Judge Mnatsakan Maritorsyan], and the second key actor was the prosecutor, Hovsep Sargsyan, then it can be clearly seen that this is simply the second series of the Mar. 1 orders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ara Karapetyan is one of ten people accused of breaking into the home of and assaulting former chair of the RA State Customs&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[21355,27008],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}