Former Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ara Babloyan’s defense counsel Aram Vardevanyan took to his Facebook to report the following:

“I would like to inform that today the court held another hearing under the extremely groundless and unlawful criminal case regarding former Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Ara Babloyan, after which Judge Manukyan ruled to grant my motion and lift the pre-trial measure chosen against Babloyan.

During the court hearing, I submitted a motion to lift the pre-trial measure chosen against Babloyan (signature to not leave the country). One of the grounds for this was that, since 2020, Babloyan has received permission to leave Armenia for a short period four times and has left and returned earlier than the prescribed period in three of the four cases. In one case, which was for leave in March 2020 and was granted by the Prosecutor General’s Office, Babloyan hadn’t taken advantage of this during the preliminary investigations stage due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite these circumstances, as always, the prosecutors objected the motion, but the court truly implemented justice. Law-enforcement authorities need to realize that a pre-trial measure is not to be applied ‘in all cases’ and there have to be legal grounds, and if there are no legal grounds, the pre-trial measure must be lifted.”