After promulgation of the Constitutional Court’s decision, the court needs to convene a special session in regard to the case of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and other ex-officials and stop the criminal prosecution that is being carried out against them under Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code. This is what Kocharyan’s attorney Hayk Alumyan said during today’s press conference, commenting on the Constitutional Court’s decision to declare Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code unconstitutional.

Article 300.1 envisages “overthrow of the constitutional order”, and the ex-president is charged under this article.

“This is by law. I can’t say what will happen next since we’re dealing with eccentric people whose actions are unpredictable,” he said. According to him, the prosecution also had to convene a session and lift the charge since the relevant article was declared unconstitutional, but the defense didn’t wait for the actions of the court and the prosecution and submitted a motion on Saturday.

“In addition, according to the law, the criminal prosecution bodies need to apologize to Robert Kocharyan and ex-officials Yuri Khachaturov, Seyran Ohanyan and Armen Gevorgyan in writing for the illegal criminal prosecution. As for the pre-trial measure, if the court doesn’t annul it at all, it needs to reduce the amount of the bail significantly.”

The attorney emphasized that the second charge (taking a bribe) is due to the fact that the main charge is weak and stressed that the charge is illogical since the materials and the charge are different from each other.

In addition, Alumyann stated that all courts have acknowledged the fact that there is no substantiated suspicion under Article 300.1 and preferred not to say what the defense will do next.