Najarian Victory

I attended the Najarian court case today and witnessed the final appeal of the defense fail - meaning the Najarians won. The guy who robbed them will now be tried in a criminal court for what he has done. The defense he put up was quite visibly lacking, since his story (excuse) was just not believable. The audience (admitedly strongly in the Najarian's favor) laughed at a few of the more unbelievable answers.

It was good to see this victory, though the fact that the case had to be turned into a huge circus and litmus test for whether the Diaspora could get justice in the Armenian court system is a shame... it is still not the way that ordinary Diasporans will feel comfortable investing in Armenia.

This having been said, the case is yet another one in which Diasporans put too much faith in an untrustworthy local and got burned. True, the legal system let them down afterwards, but the initial problem was in trusting someone who had he been of any other nationality, they probably would not have trusted so completely... so there are two lessons to be learned here at least... (and no, I am NOT implying there are no trustworthy locals around - I am saying quite clearly though that some Diasporans do not excersize as much suspicion as they ought to with some locals, presumably because they are Armenian... that lesson should have been learned by the error of others a decade ago...)