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Lawyer Ara Ghazaryan says the assessments provided by the latest Freedom House report on Armenia are “objective”.

"I myself, as a lawyer, feel that judges are restrained amid an abuse of disciplinary proceedings against them,” he told Panorama.am in an interview on Tuesday.

Freedom House recently released its annual report Nations in Transit 2024, where Armenia’s judicial framework and independence rating is 2.75 (on a 7-point scale).

Ghazaryan believes the abuse of disciplinary action against Armenian judges started when Karen Andreasyan, Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), announced that it would be used to carry out a judicial vetting.

"This is a pseudo idea because vetting is not carried out through disciplinary proceedings, not to mention that vetting itself is a failed idea globally,” the lawyer noted. “This bogus idea began to be put into practice, leading to a decline in the rule of law. We lack a separate law on vetting, and all grounds of disciplinary liability do not provide for vetting.”

“Disciplinary proceedings are not aimed at removing judges from the judiciary, but regulating public behavior. Everything started with this pseudo idea, which still persists. We see the assessment of all this, the [Freedom House] assessments are very objective," Ghazaryan added.