Armenian to Seek Trial in Soviet Union
A militant Armenian nationalist forcibly expelled from the Soviet Union on charges of fomenting dissent said today that he will file an application for a visa to return and seek an open trial.
“Nobody has the right to exile me from my country,” Paruir Airikyan, 39, told a news conference. “I think people like me are necessary for perestroika. “
Perestroika is the Russian word for restructuring, one of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s planned reforms that nationalist and ethnic groups have sought to use as support for their efforts to gain more autonomy.
Asked if he had confidence in Soviet courts, which committed him to prisons, concentration camps and internal exile for 18 years, Airikyan said he believed “a public, open trial . . . would contribute to democratization and I think it’s possible I could win.”
Airikyan was a prominent figure in the unsuccessful drive to unite the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, with Soviet Armenia.
He was arrested last March in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and expelled after he refused to sign a petition requesting exile.
He arrived in France on a two-week transit visa last Monday. Airikyan said he also would accept invitations to West Germany and the United States, but that his goal now is to seek legal methods for returning to the Soviet Union.
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