Is a Petition to Release Kocharian Necessary?

BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

Immediately after a judge remanded former president Robert Kocharian to custody on charges of breaching Armenia’s Constitutional order in relation to the March 1, 2008 post-election showdown between protesters and police, during which eight civilians and two police officers were killed, a group of parliament members began circulating a petition urging the court to release Kocharian on his own recognizance.

Initially, the petition was signed by 41 members of parliament who were members of former president Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia, with Parliament Speaker Ara Babloyan and deputy speaker Arpine Hovhannisyan and Eduard Sharmazanov as the most prominent signatories to the document.

The petition was announced on the same day as Kocharian’s attorneys filed an appeal of the remand decision, which will be hear by a court in Yerevan on Thursday.

The final petition that was submitted to the court on Monday contained 46 signatures with three members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation bloc—Ruzan Arakelyan, Armenouhi Kiureghyan and Romik Manukyan—and one members of businessman Gagik Tsarukyan’s bloc co-signing the document. The ARF and the Tsarukyan bloc are part of the current government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

(On Tuesday, a group of Artsakh Parliament members also submitted a similar petition to Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s office calling for Kocharian’s release. By contrast there are no ARF members’ signatures on that petition.)

The ARF members’ signatures on the petition follow an announcement by the ARF Supreme Council of Armenia, which on July 27, the day of the Kocharian ruling, said that the while the party welcomed efforts to establish rule of law and eliminate the climate of impunity, if found that charges against Kocharian and other members of the government at the time have concerned them because they “may be interpreted as political persecution.â€