On August 3, 2005 the hearing of the case against Natella Saghatelyan, a resident of Uzbekistan charged with violating Article 132 of the Criminal Code of Armenia (human trafficking) continued in the Court of First Instance of the Malatia-Sebastia District of Yerevan.
“And so in the beginning of 2003 the next phase of my activities began. I called Anahit Mlkhasyan, a Dubai pimp, and got Nune Kcheyan's phone number in Yerevan, which I can’t recall now. I called Nune, and asked her to find girls for me and send them to Dubai, so that they would do prostitution for me. She demanded $1,000 for each girl she would recruit.
On May 25 2005, The Court of First Instance of the Kotayk Province, Judge Gagik Heboyan presiding, reviewed the request from the Abovyan prison and released prisoner Marietta Musayelyan before she had completed her sentence. Muselyan had been wanted by the police since 2003 and was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. She served only seven months.
“There are between 40 and 50 thousand Armenians in Greece , 16-17 thousand of which are Greek- Armenians born here. The rest are people who have come from Armenia over the last ten or fifteen years.”
On May 25 th, The Court of First Instance of the Kotayk Province, Judge Gagik Heboyan presiding, issued a decision that is a classic example of the support pimps receive in the Armenian legal system.
"One day my sister Arus came with a girl, her name was Anna. Arus said 'She'll be your wife.' I slept with Anna that day. She was my first girl. I haven't been with a woman since," 24-year-old Arsen Gevorgyan told us, the second time we met.
"In an inspection carried out at the Sotk mine, 865.2 kg of gold, 3.3 tons of silver, 0.86 tons of selenium, and 7.18 tons of tellurium were discovered. An inspection of the Meghradzor goldmine in the Kotayk Marz revealed hidden resources consisting of 143.4 kg of gold, 2.78 tons of silver and 3.38 tons of tellurium," read a June 3, 2004 statement by the Ministry of Ecology's State Environmental Supervision Department.
Aisha, whose real name is Lusine Hakobyan, is one of the most notorious pimps in Dubai . She is known among prostitutes for being cruel and slovenly.
On February 4, 2005 at 8:30 p.m. there was an exchange of gunfire in the TETS-i Krug neighborhood on the outskirts of Yerevan . The shootout lasted fifteen minutes; one man, Mher Ter-Harutiunyan, was killed, and dozens were injured.
The Court of First Instance of the Kentron and Nork-Marash Communities of Yerevan has partially satisfied the claim of US citizen George Najarian, ruling to continue the criminal investigation into the case and to involve George Najarian as the aggrieved party.
Forty children, all of them boys, are ill with hepatitis in the Armenian College of Calcutta over the last few months. The cause of the epidemic is still unclear.
Hetq has been investigating the problem of trafficking in Armenian women for more than a year now, trying to find out how these women get into the United Arab Emirates, what forces them to take this path and engage in prostitution, who runs this business in Armenia and the UAE and why they are not punished, and what steps law enforcement agencies in Armenia and the United Arab Emirates have taken to stop human trafficking. Our investigative...
Notorious pimp Amalia Mnatsakanyan has been released after serving only one month of a two-year sentence. "Mother Pimp Nano", as she is known to law enforcement officials, had been wanted by Interpol. Arrested in the United Arab Emirates, she was transferred to Armenian custody in March 2004. In August, Judge Pargev Ohanyan the Kentron and Nork-Marash Districts of Yerevan sentenced Nano to two years in prison term. By September, she was free.
Dubai's Armenian pimps are notorious for their criminal past. Most of them have been arrested at least once in Armenia for pimping and have spent at least one year in jail.
These are the amounts of bank wire transfers from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Armenia over the last four years.
Nights are always mysterious, Arabian nights even more so. The dark engulfs the limitless desert all at once. The yellow tinges of the horizon fade away and vanish, opening the way to the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Sunlight is unnoticeably replaced by the light of streetlamps. In Dubai, the day has just started...
The man in this picture is known as Asad. He is the boss of the Armenian pimps in Dubai.
There have been women from Armenia in the United Arab Emirates ever since the early 1990's, when flights started between Yerevan and Dubai. At first, they would buy cheap goods to sell in Armenia. Then they saw that there was a more lucrative business in Dubai, and they started selling themselves for sex. The more business-minded among them made various contacts and started "exporting" girls from Armenia.
21-year-old A. went to Dubai with her sister N. Her sister, known as Klara to the locals, is still there.
"My sister is 15. I want to bring her here, because I don't have money. She is suffering there, too. She doesn't have a baby. She is more young. If she is here, it will help us," says T. from Tanzania, weeping.
We first met Suzy at the Cyclone nightclub, pretending to be two Americans. The next day, we invited her by phone to the Movenpick Hotel. We negotiated a price, and then told her that we were Armenians, looking for our 18-year old relative.
Ask any taxi-driver in Dubai where to find girls, and you'll get the same answer-Cyclone.
The court hearing of the case Najarians v. the Prosecutor General's Office has again been delayed for a week, the second time in a row that a hearing has been inexplicably postponed. Although presiding Judge Poghosyan points to Judge Eva Darbinyan's illness as the reason, our sources have informed us that Judge Darbinyan was in the courthouse that day.
Hetq has been investigating the problem of trafficking in Armenian women for more than a year now, trying to find out how these women get into the United Arab Emirates, what forces them to take this path and engage in prostitution, who runs this business in Armenia and the UAE and why they are not punished, and what steps law enforcement agencies in Armenia and the United Arab Emirates have taken to stop human trafficking.
In 1995 Igityan turned to Najarian with a request to establish a partnership in Armenia, and later proposed to start a photo shop business. Soon they agreed to proceed.
As reported earlier, in December 9, 2004 the Court of First Instance of the Kentron and Nork Marash Communities of Yerevan partially satisfied the claim of US citizen George Najarian
For a long time Hetq has been working on a series of articles about various foreign organizations that implement projects in Armenia, on how efficient and transparent their work is, if there is any risk of corruption, etc.
In December 9, 2004 the Court of the First Instance of Kentron, Nork - Marash Communities partially satisfied the claim of a US citizen George Najarian.
Yerevan, January 19, 2005. We were informed by the by the Undertakers' Office of the Yerevan Municipality that this month, as of January 19 th , fourteen corpses had been buried in the area of the Nubarashen Cemetery reserved for "the unclaimed".
Bash, whose real name is Samvel, died on 14 January 2005 . A week earlier while preparing the first draft of an article about him on the occasion of his birthday, I had written that this was definitely his last. My colleagues, however, suggested that to say such things about the living was inappropriate and so, I took the line out.
Vagrants Robert and Gayane are escorting us to show the life of the homeless in Yerevan . Gayane says that in the past week 12 bomzh have died from the frost. Walking on a little further, we can see an old man, Misha, sitting close to a fire lit on the pavement.
Passing by the construction site of the new American Embassy compound in Yerevan, we noticed laundry hanging on a line in the desolate territory. We moved toward it, and heard dogs as we approached. A woman emerged from her home (if you can call it a home) and scolded the dogs.
"You know, many of us are complete scoundrels-we've committed a lot of sins. As for me, I'm destroyed and I have no way back. But there are people among us who can get out of this situation if you help them.
A woman completely covered in soot was dragging two huge bags toward a half-built structure. We approached her. Cursing somebody, she kept dragging her bags full of plastic bottles, bits of paper, scraps of food.
Yerevan, Armenia. Near the Cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator. 11:20 p.m. December 24, 2004.
Nubarashen Cemetery , Yerevan -- 6 January 2005 , the day that Armenians celebrate Christmas.
Yerevan, Armenia. The public park near the Chamber Music Hall. December 30, 2004. 5 p.m.
58-year-old Gagik Shahnazaryan has been living with his wife, 54-year-old Gayane Nersisyan, in an abandoned garage on the grounds of his old workplace for a month now. "I asked the owner to let us stay here for a while. He is a conscientious man, and allowed us to stay. Otherwise, we would freeze to death in the streets," Gagik said.
In August, 2003, Arayik Harutunyan, the legal representative of US citizen George Najarian advised that Grigor Igityan's case be tried under Article 178.3 of the Criminal Code. That article defines fraud, i.e., misappropriation of, or obtaining a right over, a substantial part of another party's property through deception or abuse of trust. Point 3 of Article 178 provides for fraud in "exceptionally excessive volumes, punishable from four...
Aram Martirosyan lives in a suburb of Yerevan . He is fifty years old and has been suffering from tuberculosis for twelve years now.
The Poghosyan brothers, Edgar and Vazgen, decided to start a small business. They wanted to open an auto repair shop, and applied to the Yerevan mayor's office to lease a plot of land.
Following a third hearing on December 9, 2004 , the Court of First Instance of the Kentron and Nork- Marash Communities of Yerevan partly allowed the appeal by George Najarian against the Prosecutor General's Office.
November 5, 2004 was a historic day for the officers of the National Security Service: their boss, Karlos Petrosyan was dismissed from office "at his request".
We have also found out that although these buildings were legalized and Tsarukyan was given ownership documents for 1.4 hectares of land, his territory, in fact, is twice as big as the land plot legalized by the decision of the Tsaghkadzor Mayor's Office.
Members of Parliament Gagik Tsarukyan and Levon Sargisyan, Head of the State Customs Department Armen Avetisyan, and Deputy Head of the State Police Department Armen Yeritsyan have all built houses in the recreation areas and forest reserves of Tsaghkadzor, as Hetq has reported.
Only our lieutenant knew that the enemy was at prayer when the order was given for us to attack. That was the plan. That was the idea. Most of us, however, didn't know and were therefore surprised to see them kneeling.
In 2001 and 2002 the company Yerevan Zvartnots, Ltd. exported and re-exported from Armenia a large number of machine-tools.
February 1994. The Horadiz region of Azerbaijan . An Armenian military formation was counter- attacking the enemy and moving forward under the command of Samvel Karapetyan. Film director Karen Gevorgyan and cameraman Gagik Harutiunyan were with one of the units, documenting military operations.
Today there are forty-five families-one hundred and sixty people-living in the ramshackle building. Until recently it was considered ownerless; a month ago the building was transferred by a government decision to the Shengavit district administration.
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