David Tonoyan's Legal Team Issues Statement

David Tonoyan's legal team has issued a statement indicating that discussions regarding the objectivity of the criminal case examination are no longer viable and that the primary objective of the investigation is to keep David Tonoyan in custody throughout the pre-trial proceedings.

The full statement is as follows:

"All motions submitted by David Tonoyan and his defenders related to the expert examination are being rejected without sufficient and professional justification. The legal group representing D. Tonoyan has filed several motions with the investigative body, including requests to allow attendance at the appointed forensic expert examination and to provide explanations, as stipulated by the Criminal Procedure Code, regarding new questions to be presented to the appointed expert, and a motion to disqualify the expert. All these motions were denied by the investigative body.

Furthermore, the questions submitted by our side are more important for ensuring the objectivity of this criminal case and determining the suitability of the missiles than the questions currently posed to the expert. The investigator has posed questions to which they have long had answers, while the questions crucial for the defense's objective investigation have been rejected without justification.

Additionally, as we have previously stated, for the sake of clarifying important circumstances regarding the case, the comprehensive examination assigned by the investigator has been left unexecuted, and charges have been brought against individuals based on assumptions and conjectures lacking relevant expertise.

As noted in our statement released on October 19, 2021, D. Tonoyan will demand to participate in the actual expert examination of the qualitative characteristics of the arms and ammunition supplied to the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia. However, by denying this request without proper justification, the pre-trial body has concluded that D. Tonoyan's presence at the examination would obstruct the expert's work. Furthermore, there has been no discussion at all regarding the involvement of defense attorneys in the examination.

Moreover, the pre-trial body initially specified that only through examination could the quality and suitability of the missiles be determined, yet afterwards, without explanation, it left the examination execution unfulfilled and appointed another forensic examination.

These facts — the failure to carry out the appointed examination, the deprivation of the right to be present at the examination and provide explanations, assigning the examination to a non-objective individual, and not posing crucial questions to the examination — give the defense grounds to argue that there can no longer be any discussion of the objectivity of this criminal case examination. Furthermore, the crucial goal of the investigation seems to be keeping D. Tonoyan, as well as other individuals charged in the case, in custody throughout the entire pre-trial process.

We would also like to add that the decisions regarding the failure to conduct the examination assigned by the investigator, as well as the rejections of the motions we submitted, have already been appealed to the Prosecutor General of Armenia, and we expect that if he demonstrates objectivity, the appeals should be granted."