Author: Garnik Zakarian

Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) can return from Azerbaijani captivity only when the “Armenian statehood is restored”, according to Edgar Ghazaryan, a former chief of staff of the Constitutional Court and Armenia’s former ambassador to Poland.

“Our only compatriot recently released from Azerbaijani captivity is Maral Najarian, who is a citizen of the Republic of Lebanon regardless of her nationality, while Lebanon has a government which is concerned with the fate of its citizens. After her release and return to Lebanon, Maral Najarian was hosted by Lebanese President Michel Aoun on March 20,” Ghazaryan wrote on Facebook.

He recalled that during the meeting, Maral Najarian thanked the president of Lebanon for his efforts to release her.

“Our other compatriots who are citizens of Armenia can be released from [Azerbaijani] captivity only when our statehood is restored and Armenia has a head of state again. No clown who has destroyed the country can resolve such a difficult problem.

“Now we must thank the Russian president, who, amid the absence of our statehood, managed to organize the repatriation of 44 Armenian POWs from Azerbaijan on December 14, 2020 and 5 others on January 28 through the efforts of the head of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Artsakh, Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov,” Ghazaryan said.

For two and a half years, the lawyers of Armenia’s former President Robert Kocharyan “have repeatedly warned” that Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code has problems with applicability and certainty, one of the lawyers, Aram Orbelyan, told reporters on Tuesday, after a court in Yerevan ruled to end the criminal prosecution against Kocharyan and three other former top officials under the article.

“Still at the stage of preliminary investigation more than 2.5 years ago, we filed a motion to the prosecutor asking for the opinion of the Constitutional Court over Article 300.1,” the lawyer said, stressing the need to reveal how much money the state has spent on conducting criminal proceedings, the illegality of which, according to him, was initially clear to everyone.

“Now they [the prosecutors] have applied to the Constitutional Court. There is no mechanism for altering [the accusations] and there are no grounds for bringing a new charge [against Kocharyan],” the lawyer said.

As for Article 309 of the Criminal Code, Orbelyan said its statute of limitations expired long ago.

“The mania to convict a person at any cost is in itself illegal, inhuman and unconstitutional. We must finally realize the presumption of innocence is one of the most important human rights,” he said, adding that the Prosecutor’s Office should also be guided by the presumption of innocence, which says a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The lawyer also said that no clear decision on the violation of Kocharyan’s rights has yet been made.

“It’s for our client to decide on what processes to start. In my opinion, all persons whose rights have been violated should launch a process to protect their rights. This is the tool which will make the Prosecutor’s Office refrain from the desire to convict persons at any cost and begin to fulfill its duties of restoring the rule of law,” Orbelyan said.

Only two national weightlifting federations have submitted their applications for full participation in the European Weightlifting Championship in Moscow, Tass news agency has been told at the European Weightlifting Federation. 

The tournament which is a qualification ahead for the Tokyo Olympics is scheduled to be hosted by the Russian capital of Moscow between April 3 and 11.

The European Weightlifting Championship in Moscow is expected to be attended by athletes from Belarus, Ukraine, Kosovo, Poland, Spain, Cyprus. Armenia will be represented by 15 athletes   – 4 female and 11 male weightlifters. 

To remind, the tournament was initially scheduled to be hosted by the Russian capital on April 4-12, 2020, but was postponed several times since then due to the global spread of the novel coronavirus.