Read the daily news digest for July 1 here.

Armenia reports 118 new COVID cases and 1 death

As of 11:00 on July 2, a total of 225.339 cases of COVID has been confirmed, of which 216.977 have been cured and 4.518 died. 2.744 patients are currently under treatment. A total of 1.192 .578 tests has been performed ever since. Thus, 3.656 tests were performed yesterday, of which 118 new cases of COVID were confirmed. Since yesterday, 95 people have recovered and 1 died.

The preliminary investigation of Armen Charchyan's case is over

Today at 3 pm, the end of the preliminary investigation into the case of Armen Charchyan, the director of "Izmirlian" Medical Center will be announced, meaning the body implementing proceedings has decided to complete the case and send it to the court, Charchyan's lawyer Eric Alexanyan wrote about this on his Facebook page.

“We believe that, in such conditions, it’s clear that there can’t be any other talk about the existence of a ground for arrest that will obstruct investigation (even though there was never any ground) since, according to the body implementing proceedings, all the necessary actions have been performed; in particular, all the witnesses have been interviewed. Consequently, simple logic reminds us that there is no ground for influencing the witnesses at all. At least in the context of this issue, Armen Charchyan can’t continue to be under arrest," Alexanyan added.

It should be reminded that Charchyan is accused of forcing people to participate in the snap parliamentary elections.

3 political forces apply to the Constitutional Court with the demand to invalidate the results of the snap parliamentary elections

On July 2, 2021, the Constitutional Court registered the application of the "Armenian Homeland" party with the demand to invalidate the results of the snap parliamentary elections. The applications of the "Armenia" alliance and the "Zartonq" party were registered as well. Thus, as of 16:15, no other applications related to the election results have been submitted.

The “Armenia” alliance demands to declare the election results invalid, to declare the election results invalid and to determine the order of distribution of mandates, or to call for a second round of elections.

The alliance has also submitted a letter-motion along with the application on the impossibility of the Constitutional Court judge Vahe Grigoryan's participation in the examination of the application, because according to the official representative of the central headquarters of the alliance Aram Vardevanyan, Vahe Grigoryan, as a judicial opponent, has filed a specific case against Robert Kocharyan and Seyran Ohanyan.

The director of the Goris Cultural Center forced the employees to take part in the "Armenia" alliance's campaign

The RA Investigative Committee has completed the preliminary investigation of the criminal case initiated in connection with the incident that the director of the "Gusan Ashot" cultural center in Goris has forced the center's employees to participate in the "Armenia" alliance's pre-election campaign.

Besides that, on June 15, 2021, the director of the cultural center has met with the librarian in front of the museum of the same organization and threatened to fire him after learning that he was going to take part in the pre-election rally of the "Civil Contract" party. The preliminary investigation is over and the criminal case is sent to the prosecutor supervising the trial with the motion to send the indictment to the court for confirmation.

The regular court session on the case of 13 POWs from Shirak took place in Baku

The trial of 13 Armenian POWs, who are accused of terrorist acts and other crimes, continued in Baku.

At the July 2 sitting, the Armenian POWs gave testimonies. Zhora Manukyan stated that in November of the last year he received a notice from the military commissariat. 

"I went to the military commissariat, where they gave me a weapon and 120 bullets. We were told that we must protect the Armenian border. We left by bus and got somewhere at night. In the morning we learned that we were in Lachin (ed. Berdzor). Then we passed the peacekeepers. Our commander was Arsen Ghazaryan. He said that he would come and take us from there after some time. On December 13, they ordered us to go down. When we went down, we were arrested by the Azerbaijani soldiers. We surrendered, giving our weapons," Zhora Manukyan said.

Davit Stepanyan gave the same testimony. Answering the prosecutor's questions, he noted that they arrived in Berdzor on November 27. Arthur Baghdasaryan, one of the POWs, stated that he did not know about the clauses of the November 9 announcement. Some of the POWs stated that they had been in the direction of Jabrayil during the war and later returned to Armenia.

One body found in the Varanda region

The search for the bodies of the killed servicemen in Mataghis did not yield any results today. A body of an Armenian soldier was found and evacuated from the Varanda (Fizuli) region. 

The US added Turkey to the list of countries implicated in the use of child soldiers

The United States added Turkey to a list of countries that are implicated in the use of child soldiers over the past year, placing a NATO ally for the first time in such a list, in a move that is likely to further complicate the already fraught ties between Ankara and Washington.

The U.S. State Department determined in its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) that Turkey was providing "tangible support" to the Sultan Murad Division in Syria, a faction of the Syrian opposition that Ankara has long, supported and a group that Washington said recruited and used child soldiers.

There was no immediate reaction from Turkey on the move.

In a briefing call with reporters, a senior State Department official also made a reference to the use of child soldiers in Libya, saying Washington was hoping to work with Ankara on the issue to address it. Turkey, through proxies and its own armed forces, has been involved in the Libyan conflict. Ankara's support has helped the Tripoli-based government reverse a 14-month assault from eastern forces backed by Egypt and Russia. Governments placed on this list are subject to restrictions, according to the State Department report, on certain security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment, absent a presidential waiver.