RFE/RL covers news that the General Prosecutor’s Office has investigated claims that its workers were involved in the trafficking of women from Armenia. The investigation followed allegations from the publication I work for in Armenia, Hetq Online, that they are, and concerns recently voiced by the U.S. Government that Armenian officials are not doing enough to tackle the problem.

In a worldwide “interim assessment” of the problem released on February 1, the U.S. State Department deplored “modest” progress in the implementation of an anti-trafficking program launched by the Armenian government three years ago. “Regrettably, the government did not take any proactive steps to address allegations of trafficking-related governmental complicity and corruption,” it said in a written statement. The State Department specifically noted that “a government official, who has been frequently criticized by victims and NGOs for trafficking complacency, remains in his position within the Prosecutor General’s anti-trafficking task force.”

It was an apparent reference to Aristakes Yeremian, a senior official at Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General. A series of reports that appeared in the Hetq.am online publication last year charged that Yeremian and other law-enforcement officials are maintaining close ties with prostitution rings operating in the United Arab Emirates, the prime destination of hundreds of women who have been trafficked from Armenia. Hetq.am editor Edik Baghdasarian, who repeatedly visited Dubai in 2004 and 2005, cited unnamed Armenian prostitutes there as telling him that they were blackmailed into paying bribes to those officials.

Yeremian strongly denied the allegations in an RFE/RL interview in April last year. He said he met Armenian pimps in Dubai in September 2004 only to “question” and warn them against continuing their illegal activities.

According to the report, the General Prosecutor Aghvan Hovsepian has concluded that Hetq Online did not supply concrete evidence to his office, but given the way the government works here, that’s hardly surprising. Hovsepian was apparently accompanied by the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia when he presented both the report and the official web site for his office.

I’m told, however, that sources in the U.S. Embassy, describe Hovsepian’s investigation as mere “theatre.” One guesses this will be a black mark against Armenia in the next U.S. State Department report on trafficking.

Mihran Minasian, a senior prosecutor who led the inquiry, complained that Baghdasarian refused to submit video of his incriminating interviews with Armenian women working in Dubai. The journalist says he did not want to disclose their identity because he feared for their security.

Speaking at a news conference, Minasian cast doubt on the credibility of Baghdasarian’s claims that Yeremian received a $5,000 bribe from Anahit Malkhasian, a reputed pimp who died in a mysterious car accident in Dubai late last year. The prosecutor also said her death made it practically impossible to investigate the allegation.

Hetq Online’s series of articles investigating the trafficking of women to the United Arab Emirates can be found at http://www.hetq.am. The General Prosecutor’s new web site can be found at http://www.genproc.am. An albeit low quality internet version of Hetq’s documentary film, originally broadcast on Yerkir Media TV, can be found here.