According to our information, the law initiative on granting amnesty, which is the main topic of discussion in the corridors of the parliament house, will be brought to the parliament from the president’s office on June 15-18.
According to our interlocutors, who are pro-government MPs, the authorities have set this date and will not change it because it is not only the wish of the president but the people as well. Furthermore, yesterday several pro-government MPs said with irony that nothing can hinder the possible amnesty because the public commission has already passed the wish of the society to the president and artist Sos Sargsyan has made his famous “speech of the age” concerning the oppositionists sentenced after the events of March 1. Besides that, Serzh Sargsyan has promised that if people ask him he will use his constitutional right and will apply to the parliament to grant amnesty to the political prisoners. In other words, according to the MPs, after all these initiatives if the president does not grant amnesty it will be very hard to explain why. By the way, yesterday Arshak Sadoyan, who is a member of the public council as well, said that Sos Sargsyan had not been the only one in the commission to say such things about the political prisoners. Sos Sargsyan specifically said that the political prisoners are “criminals” and there should be nothing about them in the petition submitted to the president for amnesty.
According to our information, the rumors that the draft of the amnesty goes hand to hand in the prisons are not true. Even more, there are rumors saying that the heads of the prisons are spreading such rumors in order to make a chaos among the prisoners to make them be more interested in the amnesty. Specifically, our sources of information say that the officials of prisons are negotiating with prisoners to give them some bribe to include their names in the lists subject to amnesty.
Arshak Sadoyan says he doesn’t know which articles will be subject to amnesty because there is no such provision. “The advisory committee of the RA president and the Public Commission don’t solve such issues fully. As the public commission was asked what is the official position, it held discussions, including in its 12 sub-commissions, and as a result it decided to suggest the president to declare amnesty. We believe that amnesty should be granted. Thus, the sub-commissions of the public commission suggested which clauses should be included in the amnesty,” said A. Sadoyan. In answer to the question specifically which categories subject to amnesty have been submitted to the president Arshak Sadoyan said, “As it is up to the public chamber to decide, and before presenting it at the parliament it is decided by the president and instructed to certain state bodies, it is natural that the public chamber can only advise or suggest which social sectors to apply the amnesty to in order to weaken the moral and psychological tension but not separate people or clauses. Thus, the decision of the public chamber, which was sent to the president, is not decided by the public chamber and we can’t make a decision concerning specific people.” Mr. Sadoyan says that these issues are not clarified yet and it is not time to discuss them now. Concerning the rumors that the prison officials already know how the amnesty paper will look like he said, “It is a confidential document. I don’t know whether the prison officials know about it but no document signed by the president can be available in prisons because first of all it is to be sent to the parliament because the parliament may make changes in them. In other words, it is impossible to have a final document now. As for any possible outflow of information from the police, national security service or the president’s office, it is another issue. However it is possible that people are very sensitive to such information in prisons and there are people who want to seem tougher and say that they have such information.”
In answer to a question whether Sos Sargsyan’s opinion has been written in the document submitted to the president Mr. Sadoyan said, “There are free discussions in the public chamber. There are other members having opinions like Sos Sargsyan too. However the public chamber finds that this issue should be discussed and as the public chamber is not the body that can make a final decision, it can’t tell what to do. ” However, there were not many people like Sos Sargsyan there and we wrote some information about the people arrested aftermath the events of March 1-2.”
By the way, yesterday Armenpress news agency published information concerning the specific number of people in the penitentiaries of the Justice ministry as of June 1. Thus, there are 4294 persons in the penitentiaries, 1187 out of which are prisoners. There are 1156 people in the Nubarashen prison, 52 people in Yerevan-Center prison, 297 people in Artik, 214 in Vanadzor, 178 in Vardashen, 159 in Goris, 236 in Abovyan, 577 in Erebuni, 511 in Sevan, 577 in Kosh, 258 in the hospital of prisoners, 24 in Meghri, and 55 people in Hrazdan penitentiary. There are 82 life prisoners, 78 out of which are kept in Nubarashen penitentiary (the cases of 4 persons out of them have not been enforced), and 2 persons in the hospital of prisoners and Yerevan-Center penitentiary. To note, at present there are 52 people in cells as a result of the events of March 1-2 and it is not clear how many of them will be covered by the long-expected amnesty. However, there are rumors that it will depend on the court’s decision and how many years they will be sentenced for. According to our sources of information it is not excluded that the amnesty may be within the same context as the one in 2006, when the prisoners who were sentenced for less than 3 years were set free, and the other ones sentenced for more than three years were not covered by the amnesty.