Kocharyan's Legal Team Releases Excerpt from the Court Act of the Seven Case

The legal team of Armenia's second president Robert Kocharyan has published an excerpt from the court act related to the Seven Case on their Facebook page.

"Assess for yourself the basis on which the prosecutors gave up criminal prosecution under Article 300, Part 1, with the decision of March 31, 2009," reads the post from the legal team.

"... - was charged under Part 1 of Article 300 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia for allegedly engaging in deliberate actions aimed at violently overthrowing the constitutional order of the Republic of Armenia and forcibly seizing state power in collusion with a group of individuals, while Article 300.1 was not in effect at the time of the March events of 2008, as stated by the National Assembly's law adopted on March 18, 2009, 'On Amendments and Additions to the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia'.

Considering that under Part 2 of Article 13 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, a law defining the criminality of an act, aggravating punishment, or worsening the condition of the person who committed the offense has no retroactive effect, therefore the criminal prosecution of the accused under Part 1 of Article 300 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia is subject to cessation," the decision states.

It is noteworthy that the defense of Robert Kocharyan, who is charged in the March 1 case, has repeatedly stated that Kocharyan could not be charged under Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code as such an article did not exist during the events of March 2008.

Kocharyan's defenders also argue that it was inappropriate to charge individuals in the case under an article from which prosecutors had previously refrained.

Today, the Prosecutor General of Armenia, Arthur Davtyan, stated in a conversation with reporters that there is no legal commentary on this decision.

"This decision contains absolutely no commentary, while specific circumstances determine whether a norm is aggravating or mitigating, and the law includes definitions for that. In our understanding, the new law is by no means an aggravating law," he said.