Acting PM’s adviser’s testimonies over March 1 case partially admissible: Kocharyan’s defense team member

The defense team of the second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan has applied to court to change preventive measure of the ex president from arrest to release on bail and asked the Yerevan court of general jurisdiction to study the petition in shortest period of time.

The judge is already known but it is not clear whether the petition will be examined by the New Year or after it.

Speaking to Aysor.am, member of the defense team Hovhannes Khudoyan described the investigation of March 1 case as “shameful.”

“A highly irresponsible attitude is being displayed over such an important criminal case, a number of violations are being allowed, some of which lack any purpose,” Khudoyan said.

The attorney said in his opinion the investigation does not move forward with the process seemed to be frozen.

He said the investigation pace is shameful as no charges may be filed under 300.1 article of the Criminal Code with it having serious issues from legal viewpoint. He said that the article has underwent changes to lift the charges from people previously charged under this article.

He said that few attempts of cross examinations were carried out and one with general-mayor, acting PM's adviser Arshak Karapetyan in particular.

“Cross examination is being conducted if there are some controversies in the people’s testimonies,” he said, adding that there is a precedential decision of the Court of Cassation, according to which, it is possible to conduct cross examination even if one person has not given testimonies. This kind of cross examination is aimed at ensuring person’s right to address questions to the person who gave testimonies against him.

“In this case cross examination was aimed for ensuring the mentioned right,” he said, adding that they have many times applied to the investigative body and as far as they do not trust it they denied the cross examination.

Speaking about testimonies of Arshak Karapetyan, Khudoyan said that it was not so negative for Kocharyan.

“Arshak Karapetyan’s testimonies were partially not bad as he expresses concrete ideas which confirm what we say. There are just one-two expressions which are obviously illogical,” Khudoyan said.

“I would not want to say that they contradict the other testimonies but they are self-contradicting and illogical which is the result of either remembering something wrong or being oriented by someone,” Khudoyan said.

Member of Kocharyan’s defense team said more probably there will be other people who will give testimonies against Kocharyan but another question is whether they are trustworthy or not.