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March 28
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There are two main reasons why I was very concerned about the fact that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Armenia responded to the advisory opinion that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had sent to the Constitutional Court of Armenia. This is what former Prosecutor General of Armenia, former Representative of Armenia before the ECHR Gevorg Kostanyan declared on Shavarsh Gevorgyan’s “Right of Speech” TV show aired on H2 TV.

“The first reason is that the Constitutional Court is the only and exclusive addressee of the advisory opinion and only the Constitutional Court is entitled to evaluate the decision of the ECHR. The second reason is that the Prosecutor General or the Prosecutor General’s Office in general is not an entity of the given legal relations. In other words, the Prosecutor General’s Office or the Prosecutor General is not a participant in the legal relations in this procedure of constitutional justice. Interpreting the response of the Prosecutor General’s Office is a waste of time,” Gevorg Kostanyan said.

In response to Gevorgyan’s request to ‘translate’ the opinion of the ECHR, Kostanyan expressed satisfaction with the fact that Gevorgyan wasn’t asking him to interpret since the advisory opinion of the European Court must only be ‘translated’, not interpreted.

In response to the request to draw parallels between the states of emergency declared in early March 2008 and now, the former Prosecutor General said the comparison is very current and necessary and added that, from the legal perspective, the two states of emergency are unequivocally identical since a particular article of the Constitution clearly states that a state of emergency can be declared when constitutional order is at risk, that is, when there is a presence of armed groups, a risk of overthrow of constitutional order or, in the current case, risk of a threatening epidemic. In other words, the existence of an epidemic can pose a risk for overthrow of constitutional order.

“For comparison, when the state of emergency was declared in 2008, there was a real danger of overthrow of constitutional order, there were mass disturbances and a victim. Could there have been more victims if the state of emergency was declared later? Yes, because nobody can deny the fact that there were not only 10 victims, but also 200 people who were wounded. Now, if the coronavirus penetrated into the country in March 2020, wouldn’t it be reasonable to declare state of emergency earlier and wasn’t it necessary to set stricter restrictions? These decisions are subject to consideration from the perspective of criminal law. What is also extremely important is to know whether the restrictions were necessary and whether they were fully applied. If yes, perhaps the extent of spread of the coronavirus and the number of deaths are linked to the fact that the restrictions weren’t fully applied. There will be a criminal-legal evaluation of the authorities’ decisions either now or years later. Proceedings needed to be instituted in the case of each death. The Armenian government simply didn’t fulfill its obligations before the people and the international community. However, there will be a criminal-legal consequence. If there was no forensic medicine expert examination, how can the authorities declare that the deceased person had coronavirus, but died from other diseases? This is also something for which a legal evaluation must be given, and the answers will be provided sooner or later,” he said.

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