On Thursday the Speaker of the NA Hovik Abrahamyan told the Radio Liberty that on May 28 President Sargsyan will grant amnesty to the prisoners of the case of seven. This statement initially originated various types of assumptions and interpretations.
First of all, according to Article 81 of the RA Constitution amnesty can be granted by the Parliament with the support of the president. This means that the president offers amnesty and the NA approves or denies it. Perhaps the NA chairman meant that the president was going to apply to the NA with such an offer. And if the release of the prisoners of March 1 case is going to be with only the verbal statement of the president then in this case it relates to Article 55 of the Constitution, according to which the president has the right to personally grant amnesty. In order to prove this observation we can bring up the decrees signed by the president several times regarding the amnesty. We can also remember the NA decision of July 7, 2006, which declared amnesty on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Armenia’s independence on September 15. And this decision was made with the recommendation of the former RA president Robert Kocharyan. In this case it is not quite clear what exactly Abrahamyan meant – amnesty to be granted by the NA or the president’s possible decree. Those two have different legal meanings. At any rate, if the word is about the amnesty then according to lawyer Hayk Alumyan it is applied not against concrete people but in the event of certain types of crimes. “For example it is spread on all types of crimes, the maximum imprisonment period of which is not more than three year, conscious crimes, which are again defined not more than three years. This list also includes those crimes, which were committed unintentionally, the maximum imprisonment period of which is five years. In the case of women, men over 65 years old, the ones, who had been at war, who were imprisoned for up to five years, can also be involved in the list of amnesty,” said Alumyan. These classifications are applicable for most of the March 1 prisoners. According to the Armenian National Congress there are 51 political prisoners. Only four of these prisoners – Samvel Galstyan, Vrezh Nikolyan, Aram Bareghamyan and Ara Hovhannisyan were imprisoned for 6-9 years. If the crimes and subjects are checked then the next step of the amnesty should be its application. “If the criminal case is not filed it cannot be filed any more. If the case is filed it should be cancelled. If an accusation was brought up it should be sponged and the criminal pursuit should be cancelled,” says Alumyan. But it’s not excluded that the person, who should be granted amnesty, may refuse it. In that case the investigation should proceed till the end. Certain political prisoners of March 1 case would from time to time declare that they are not OK with the amnesty and that they hadn’t perpetrated crime to be forgiven. They demand vindication of their case. In a word at this moment it is hard to forecast if the amnesty will be spread on all the political prisoners. Besides that after the March events there are still people, who are being persecuted, who got lost and are not arrested. For example, MP Khachatur Sukiasyan, chief editor of the Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper Nikol Pashinyan and some others have disappeared. It is not known whether the amnesty will be spread on these people. Moreover, they were accused as well. Thus, the statement of Abrahamyan about the amnesty has many unclear moments. Moreover, even after the statement there were rumors that the government is planning to grant amnesty not on May 28 but on September 21. Yesterday the press officer of the Speaker Nairi Petrosyan commented on Abrahamyan’s statement. "The Speaker of the national Assembly, Hovik Abrahamian simply did not rule out the possibility of a general amnesty, expressing his good wish. Under the constitution of the Republic of Armenia, it is the president of the republic who is authorized to make such a proposal, only after it, the National Assembly can grant an amnesty," said Petrosyan. Reminder: Last week Parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamyan told Radio Liberty that President Serzh Sargsyan will declare next week a general amnesty for opposition members arrested following last year’s Armenian presidential election. Thus it’s not quite clear whether the government really wants to grant amnesty or not. In this regard the coordinator of the ANC Levon Zurabyan said the following, "We are not interested in that. Sooner or later, the political prisoners are going to be released. Everything has come crushing down. Everyone, first and foremost the authorities, know that the political prisoners are innocent and that they are in prison due to the orders of the authorities. If the authorities decide to declare amnesty, it goes to say that they also accept that the cases brought up against the prisoners were failed," Zurabyan told. According to him, the authorities are currently faced with the issue of keeping their image and keep the best men of the opposition in jail during the election campaign. There is also an opinion that on the eve of the mayoral race of Yerevan the government is granting amnesty to gain the support of the voters. As a matter of fact if the President grants amnesty and the NA approves it on May the governmental candidate will increase his chances 1of victory in the mayoral race. “I don’t think so as the citizens are already demanding the release of prisoners and are irritated about the fact that the government is still keeping the political prisoners in custody. It cannot originate positive impulses. It may slightly loosen the tension but it doesn’t mean that the voters will give their ballots to the governmental party. Only this step is not enough for their votes. The government should do much more than that. It is not clear why they gave the order to kill the innocent people on March 1-2,” says the head of the Heritage parliamentary faction Armen Martirosyan.