Lawyers for former President Robert Kocharian said on Wednesday that they will appeal against an Armenian court’s decision to allow his renewed arrest.
The Court of Appeals on Tuesday overturned a lower court’s May 18 decision to free Kocharian from prison pending the outcome of his trial.
The ex-president’s lawyers told RFE/RL’s Armenian service that they will challenge that decision in the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice. One of them, Aram Orbelian, said they will lodge the appeal after receiving and examining the full text of the decision made by a Court of Appeals judge, Armen Danielian.
Kocharian and his legal team decided to boycott the announcement of Danielian’s ruling after the judge cut short the court hearings on the matter June 20. They said that they were illegally prevented from presenting detailed arguments against their client’s arrest.
Another defense lawyer, Hovannes Khudoyan, on Wednesday also questioned the legality of what was Kocharian’s third arrest in less than a year. Khudoyan argued that Armenia’s Constitutional Court agreed last week to hold hearings and rule on two appeals lodged by him and his colleagues.
In those appeals, they suggested that Kocharian was arrested last year and charged with usurping power in the wake of a 2008 presidential election in breach of the Armenian constitution. The Constitutional Court scheduled the first hearing on the matter for August.
“The Constitutional Court has thus voiced a suspicion that there is a problem with the constitutionality [of Kocharian’s prosecution,]” claimed Khudoyan.
The Court of Cassation already dealt with the high-profile case after another Court of Appeals judge freed Kocharian from custody in August 2018. Acting on prosecutors’ appeal, the high court ordered the Court of Appeals in November to examine the case anew. The latter allowed law-enforcement authorities to press charges against Kocharian and again arrest him in December.
Kocharian stands accused of having illegally used army units against opposition protesters less than two months before completing his second and final presidential term in April 2008. He denies the accusation as politically motivated.
Eight protesters and two police officers were killed in street clashes that broke out in central Yerevan late on March 1, 2008. Citing the deadly violence, Kocharian declared a state of emergency and ordered army units into the capital on that night.
The same coup charges were also leveled against Kocharian’s former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired top army generals, Seyran Ohanian and Yuri Khachaturov. The three men, who have not been held in pre-trial detention, deny them.
Earlier this year, Kocharian and Gevorgian were also charged with bribe-taking. They reject this accusation as well.
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