YEREVAN. – At Tuesday’s court session on the criminal case against second president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and several other former senior officials, the prosecution did not agree with the arguments of the defense.

At the previous court hearing, the defense filed motions to provide all the materials for the criminal case on the tragic events that had unrolled on March 1, 2008 in Yerevan. These materials, which have been divided into separate proceedings, were selected by the investigator. But the defense believes that these materials were selected for purely indictment purposes, and the materials that the defense may use were simply not transferred.

Prosecutor Gevorg Baghdasaryan stated that the defense's arguments about the need for equality of the two parties in this court case are exaggerated, and that the defense is trying to get more information than is available.

According to him, if we approach the issue from the point of view of "there may be materials in the case," we can assume that in some other criminal case there may also be materials related to this case—and of justifying nature.

Prosecutor Petros Petrosyan added that the function of selecting the case materials is reserved for the investigator, and the court cannot intervene.

Responding to the prosecutions' arguments, defense attorney Hayk Alumyan recalled that the court is obliged to facilitate the receipt of the case documents. In addition, as per the lawyer, these documents were not received during and after the investigation. "It is only clear that [those materials] can have significance," Alumyan added, in particular.

The criticism of Prosecutor Petrosyan on the content of the speech caused an objection, which was accepted. A part of the 600-volume case materials was selected and transferred to the court, the prosecution and the investigator had chosen them, the lawyer recalled. "The investigator mentioned the election criteria in his response to the motion, all the materials confirming Kocharyan's guilt were transferred to the court. We do not know the rest of the materials, "Alumyan said.

According to him, a trial in which the prosecution decides what specific materials it transmits cannot be objective.