The charges will stem from a 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan. Kocharian, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgian and two retired army generals were already prosecuted in connection with it before being cleared of “overthrow of the constitutional order” in April 2021. They were acquitted by another court of first instance ten days after Armenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the accusation, rejected by them as politically motivated, is unconstitutional.
Prosecutors appealed against the acquittal, saying that they must be allowed to charge the defendants with abuse of power also related to the events of March 2008. The Court of Cassation, the country’s highest body of criminal justice, in turn appealed to the Constitutional Court in March this year.
The Constitutional Court ruled in July that the prosecutors can bring a different accusation stemming from the use of force against antigovernment protesters who clashed with security forces in Yerevan in March 2008. Eight protesters and two police personnel were killed in those clashes. Citing that ruling, the Court of Cassation ordered the new trial.
Kocharian and his lawyers did not attend the opening session of the trial. The ex-president’s office said later in the day that he travelled abroad on September 18 and was not notified about the date of the first court hearing. It said he will return to Armenia in case of receiving a “proper notification.”
It also emerged during the hearing that the prosecutors have not formally filed the new accusations sought by them since 2021. They will do so after “overcoming some legal procedures,” a trial prosecutor, Hayk Hovannisian, said without elaborating. He also told reporters that the four defendants can be indicted again even though the statute of limitations for the crime attributed to them has expired.
One of the defendants present at the hearing, former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian, insisted that the criminal case is part of the Armenian government’s continuing “political persecution” of Kocharian and his associates. The prosecutors deny any political motives behind the case that was opened shortly after Nikol Pashinian swept to power in 2018.
Pashinian was the main speaker at the 2008 protests marred by the deadly violence. He spent nearly two years in prison for his role in what the former Armenian authorities described as a plot to violently overthrow them.