Politics

Yesterday in a written statement posted on his website, the chief editor of the Haykakan Zhamank daily, Nicol Pashinyan, who had disappeared since March 2 of 2008, said he has decided to come out of hiding “within the next month” after this week’s release of two dozen fellow oppositionists who were imprisoned on charges mainly …

As of June 23 under the general pardon dated June 19, some 103 prisoners had been released from Armenian prisons by June 23. Sentence terms of another four inmates have been reduced, reports the spokesman for the Justice Ministry’s Department of Penitentiaries. Forty-seven prisoners were released from the Erebuny Penitentiary Institution as of June 24. …

As it was expected yesterday morning political prisoners Alexander Arzumanyan, Sirun Surenyan, Myasnik Malkhasyan and Hakob Hakobyan were released from the court room. Naturally, the judges didn’t regret over the weekend and didn’t make verdicts to vindicate the innocent prisoners. They were found guilty of organizing the deadly post-election violence in the capital and sentenced …

After the May 31 city council elections of Yerevan one of the main topics that was being discussed the political lobbies was the probability of the conduct of extraordinary parliamentary elections. Many NA MPs pledged that the Prosperous Armenia party was actively preparing for those elections. By the way this issue has become concerning for …

Yesterday the PACE summer session kicked off in Strasbourg, which among other issues will consider the resolution 1643 on Armenia on Wednesday. “Generally, the co-rapporteurs gave a positive assessment on Armenia but they will continue monitoring," head of the Armenian delegation to PACE David Harutiunyan said after today’s sitting of the Monitoring Committee. "Obviously, the …

The PACE launched the summer session yesterday. Before the summer session the PACE held a session of the Monitoring Commission and discussed Armenia’s issue. Armenia’s issue will be discussed at the PACE plenary session on June 24. According to Arman Grigoryan, the ANC’s representative to the PACE, and member of Heritage party Zaruhi Postanjyan, the …

The court will make a final decision on the Seven Case political prisoners, namely Myasnik Malkhasyan, Sasun Mikayelyan, Hakob Hakobyan, Alexander Arzumanyan and Suren Sirunyan on June 22. Sasun Mikayelyan’s case resolution will be published by the first instance court of general jurisdiction of Kotayk region, and the decisions of the other cases – by …

The National Assembly of Armenia approved the bill on granting amnesty proposed by president Sargsyan (98 votes for, 1 against and 3 votes abstained). As it was expected, the mentioned amnesty proposed to set 2000 prisoners free will not concern 18 political prisoners out of the 51 ones. Certainly the president’s representative in the parliament, …

Yesterday in fact the issue of amnesty, which had continued for a long time, was closed and the parliament adopted the bill on amnesty proposed by the president’s office (98 votes for, 1 vote against and 3 abstained votes). It’s been more than one year that the society is speaking of the amnesty and hoping …

The US Ambassador in Armenia Marie Yovanovitch has commented on the decision of the Millennium Challenges corporation to stop the financial support to the road construction project and in her interview given to the Mediamax she said that if Armenia demonstrated significant improvement of democracy, they would actively cooperate with the Armenian government and Congress …