Armenia's Court of Cassation is considering the opportunity to return the case to the Court of Appeals to change the measure of restraint applied in relation to second Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, Zhoghovurd newspaper reported.
According to the newspaper, the Court of Appeals' Aleksander Azaryan disregarded all the factors during the verdict procedure. The investigator when submitting the application said that Kocharyan is a perpetrator of a criminal act and may obstruct the investigation. But he wasn't heard by the Appellate Court judge, whose decision was based by only the ex-president's immunity.
Second Armenian President Robert Kocharyan was arrested in July for two months by a local court, but was released from pre-trial custody on August 13, after Armenia’s Court of Appeals ruled that he could not be prosecuted for the post-election violence.. He is accused of violating Armenia constitutional order in March 2008, when in a post-election standoff eight civilians and two police officers were killed.
Former head of the Central Bank of Armenia Bagrat Asatryan, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that bringing Robert Kocharian to justice for the March 2008 crimes in the new conditions is only a matter of time. “The criminal case is not closed, the investigation continues, and it is not so important whether it will be sent to jail now or later. It is important that 10 years after the March 2008 tragic events, our authorities finally took up the matter,” he said .
The expert noted that today there are no political forces left in Armenia ready to support Robert Kocharyan, including his former comrades. “We should understand that Robert Kocharyan has never been a public politician, he was a manager, that’s why he set the goal to destroy Armenia's internal policy at one time - so that no one would interfere with his rule,” Bagrat Asatryan recalled.
“ARF Dashnaktsutyun was considered Kocharyan's political supporter, but he simply sold this party some oligarch. 15 years ago, he actually privatized the Armenian parties and distributed them to the oligarchs. As a result of his efforts, the old internal political field of Armenia was destroyed, but now it turned out that Kocharyan does not have any comrades and supporters in politics. Having lost power, he became simply not interesting for the domestic political situation," the ex-head of the Central Bank of Armenia concluded.
