AFP has prepared a report on the day of the first trial over the case of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan.

The news agency’s report states that dozens of Kocharyan’s supporters rallied outside the Yerevan city court, holding placards that read ‘Kocharyan is a political prisoner” and “Political vendetta”.

“Hearings started at 1000 GMT in a tiny courtroom packed with journalists. Dressed in a grey business suit, Kocharyan looked unperturbed and smiled at supporters in the audience who shouted “Freedom”,” writes AFP.

Kocharyan told AFP that what is happening to him is nothing less than lawlessness. According to him, the current Armenian political authorities have declared him guilty, “and the judicial system now serves this political master”.

“I was a non-partisan president who acted without favor or prejudice,” Kocharyan told AFP. Kocharyan claimed that Armenia’s current authorities “are not especially enthusiastic to find out” who bears responsibility for the deaths because of “fear of revealing extremely undesirable facts for the current government”.

“They have focused instead all their efforts on the fabrication of politically motivated charges against me,” he highlighted.

The second Armenian president emphasized that Pashinyan “has a direct motivation to rewrite history in order to whitewash himself and shift responsibility for the events of 2008 to others.”