Trial Of Arrested Turkish Scholar Opens In Yerevan

Baku Today
Radio Free Europe 10/08/2005 10:40
[...]
The opening session of the trial adjourned less than an hour after its beginning at the request of one of Turkyilmaz’s newly hired lawyers who said he needs more time to familiarize himself with the case. [...] the next hearing {is} for Friday. Among those attending the first hearing were local human rights activists and officials from the U.S. embassy in Armenia.
[...]
Individuals convicted of smuggling have rarely ended up in jail in Armenia. Hence, growing questions about reasons for the severity of the charges leveled against the Turkish national of Kurdish extraction. The chief prosecutor at the trial, Koryun Piloyan, refused to explain them on Tuesday.

“You don’t look at the issue correctly,” Piloyan told RFE/RL. “[Turkyilmaz’s] deed corresponds to that article of the Criminal Code.”
[...]
“Yektan is a good man, there is nothing bad I can say about him,” said Sevan Deirmenjian, an ethnic Armenian citizen of Turkey who is pursuing a doctoral degree at Yerevan State University and befriended Turkyilmaz after meeting the latter in Armenia.

Avetik Ishkhanian of the Armenian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group, was also at the trial and urged the authorities not to give the defendant a prison sentence.[...].

Ishkhanian was among those who were allowed to visit the arrested scholar at a maximum security prison in Yerevan. “He wasn’t particularly unhappy with conditions there,” he told RFE/RL. “His main grievance was his detention. I also remember him saying that he could imagine being arrested in Turkey but never thought that could happen in Armenia.”

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.