On January 23 President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree on pardoning 16 more individuals arrested and convicted in connection with last year’s post-election violence in Yerevan, but the Armenian opposition insisted that only two of them are its supporters. The presidential press service said all of these individuals had appealed to Sargsyan for an amnesty. It said the presidential decree signed on Saturday also took into account their lack of prior criminal records as well as health conditions and family circumstances. “This is a focus, trick,” said the coordinator of the legal support center of political detainees Armen Khachatryan. “When we are saying abide with the requirements of the resolutions 1609 and 1620 we mean to justify and not grant amnesty to 60 political detainees and meanwhile try to arrest the real culprits.” “The resolutions demand the release of political prisoners, whereas the authorities release criminal elements,” Armen Khachatryan told RFE/RL. “We are telling release Gagik Jhangiryan or Alexan Arzumanyan but they release shop-lifters. They have found new ways to conceal their own crimes by releasing Serzh Sargsyan’s proxies,” he said.
