YEREVAN. – Karen Mezhlumyan the lawyer of Armenia’s former Minister of Defense Seyran Ohanyan, on Tuesday submitted to the court a motion to provide all the materials of the criminal case on the events of March 1, 2008 in Yerevan.

He noted that the 79 respective volumes submitted to the court in the criminal case against second President Robert Kocharyan and several other former senior officials contain materials on "peaceful rallies" and special actions of the police and the Armed Forces to disperse "peaceful demonstrators," but there is a lot of material in the 500-volume case stating that the rallies were not always peaceful and that riots had broken out as well. "Those materials were not transferred to the court, the investigation, in fact, hid them from the court," the lawyer stated.

According to him, one of the key proofs in this regard is that PM Nikol Pashinyan had been charged under Section 1 (actions of overthrowing the constitutional order with the consent of a group of people) of Article 300 of the Criminal Code, but with an amendment to the Criminal Code, the prosecution under this article was stopped.

The lawyer expressed confidence that there are other justifying materials in the case.

Effective defense is impossible without getting acquainted with the materials of the whole case, the lawyer emphasized, noting that he had submitted such motion before as well. "There are many facts that mass riots took place, for which people were convicted. Let them present the whole volume of materials to us; we will find justifying materials in them," Mezhlumyan said.