YEREVAN. – We have a law on freedom of assembly in Armenia, so there may be assemblies.

Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who also headed the My Step Alliance’s electoral list in Sunday’s snap parliamentary election in the country, noted the aforementioned at the election headquarters of this political force. He noted this while reflecting on the statements that rallies shall start as of Tuesday, and for the release of second President Robert Kocharyan, who has been remanded in custody.

As for Kocharyan considering his custody as a political vendetta, Pashinyan said: “I don’t think that Robert Kocharyan is accused of a conspiracy act. What occurred has occurred before everyone’s very eyes. Let’s conduct a monitoring of what the journalists have written, what politicians have said after 2008, and it will be clear whether or not this is a vendetta. In the ten-year press, perhaps nothing [else] has been discussed as much as [the fact] that the perpetrators of March 1 [2008] shall face accountability, and the names of those perpetrators were clear.

“So, if they shoot ten people [dead], it’s not a vendetta, but if a criminal case is underway for that, the case is being solved, is it already a vendetta?”

Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan—along with several other former officials—has been charged within the framework of the criminal case into the tragic events that transpired in capital city Yerevan on March 1 and 2, 2008—and under Article 300.1 Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code; that is, breaching Armenia’s constitutional order, in conspiracy with others. Kocharyan has been remanded in custody along the lines of this criminal case.

On March 1 and 2, 2008 the then authorities of Armenia used force against the opposition members who were rallying in downtown Yerevan, and against the results of the then recent presidential election. Eight demonstrators as well as two servicemen of the internal troops were killed in the clashes. But no one had been brought to account for these deaths, to this day.