YEREVAN. – Zhoghovurd daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: On July 2 of this year, it became known that the employees of the RA NSS [(National Security Service)] visited the Criminal Court of Appeal, confiscated the computer of assigning by which the court cases are assigned to the judges through the online system.

However, it turns out that aside from the Court of Appeal, the NSS has confiscated the assignment server of the entire judicial system, and now the assigning [of judges] at the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal is done manually, and thus SJC [(Supreme Judicial Council)] chairman Gagik Jhangiryan manages the judicial system as he wishes; in particular, they assign criminal, civil cases to their preferred judges and ensure the desired outcome.

This process started after the judges were not having arrested the persons who made statements against the authorities.

However, this situation will not remain without consequences. According to the information we have received, all those persons whose civil, administrative or criminal cases have been assigned by hand, they will go all the way to the end and petition to the European Court of Human Rights, noting that the assigning process was not carried out in the procedure defined by law; that is to say, the proper notification process was carried out illegally.

It turns out that in a short time, the judicial system [of Armenia] will end up in a volatile situation, as the RA Court of Cassation and the European Court of Human Rights definitely have precedents that consider such cases improperly notified.