RA ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan has started to personally study the issue of granting amnesty to Nikol Pashinyan sentenced to 7 years of imprisonment.  

According to the ombudsman, since the issue of amnesty is not unequivocal, the law has to be applied in Nikol Pashinyan's favor, i.e. he should be granted amnesty.

"The letter of the law requires that when there is no unequivocal attitude to the contents and there are contradictions, these contradictions must be interpreted in favor of the citizen and not the state institution", Armen Harutyunyan said answering reporters' question.   

After the recent visit of the delegation of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to Armenia its President Mrs. Souhayr Belhassen had touched upon the verdict in Nikol Pashinyan's case defining the sentence severe.

She also spoke about the necessity of granting amnesty to Pashinyan reminding that before Nikol gave him up authorities had promised to grant him amnesty but they did not keep their promise. Mrs. Souhayr Belhassen's statement became topic of various discussions.  

Press service of the Ministry of Justice released a statement that the Minister's words after the last week meeting of FIDH President Souhayr Belhassen and Gevorg Danielyan were not represented correctly in press. Mrs. Belhassen had passed the Minister's words as follows: "Nikol Pashinyan can be granted amnesty, and new developments are possible."

According to the press secretary, the Minister had literally said the following: "Granting amnesty means not only freeing from punishment but also reducing the term of the punishment. In case of final verdict it will become clear if there are enough grounds for granting amnesty and exactly how much the punishment can be reduced."

Mrs. Belhassen's words and the Minister's explanations essentially have the same contents and meaning, only it is not clear what Mr. Danielyan means by "final verdict".

Lawyers we applied to for explanation defined the notion of "final verdict" as absurd: "The verdict pronounced in the court of any instance is considered final", and amnesty should necessarily be applied in court if it is liable to application. In this case the Minister's words indirectly mean winning of time.

Speaking about the Justice Minister's words, Nikol Pashinyan's lawyer Lusine Sahakyan insisted that the court of general jurisdiction had to at least grant amnesty to Nikol Pashinyan in accordance with the National Assembly 2008 decision on announcing amnesty. In lawyer's words in that case Pashinyan's sentence should have been shortened with the final sentence being 3,5 years, something the judge did not do, and that means that the court ruling is not legal.

Christine Vardanyan