Minister of Justice of Armenia Rustam Badasyan today received the delegation led by US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Lynne Tracy and discussed the course of implementation of reforms in the sector.

As reported the Ministry of Justice, Minister Badasyan expressed gratitude to the US government and the Ambassador for supporting the reforms for the fight against corruption and police reforms in Armenia. The minister also touched upon the part about Armenia in the State Department’s Human Rights Report and presented the reforms that are being implemented in the penitentiary sector and for confiscation of illegal assets. Ambassador Tracy reaffirmed the support of the US government for implementation of the reforms in several sectors.

During the meeting, Minister Badasyan emphasized the need for the US government to take more active steps to specifically respond to Azerbaijani’s policy of refusing to return Armenian prisoners of war and other civilians being kept. He also stressed that those persons are prisoners of war in the sense of international humanitarian law, and this means that Azerbaijan’s statements are groundless.

The parties also discussed the actions being taken to set up the Anti-Corruption Committee, the Anti-Corruption Courts and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and several issues related to the upcoming parliamentary elections. Ambassador Tracy stressed that the snap parliamentary elections held in 2018 set a high bar for democratic, free and fair elections in the region and voiced hope that the bar would remain high during the upcoming elections. In this sense, Badasyan emphasized that the government has the political will to make sure all elections are free and transparent.