The Security Council of Armenia today disclosed excerpts from the minutes of the extraordinary session of the Security Council, violating a number of major laws at once. According to point 14 of Article 4 of the Law on Formation and Operation of the Security Council, the agenda for sessions of the Security Council, the content of the issues discussed during sessions, as well as the results of votes shall not be subject to disclosure.

The special session was held on September 30, 2020, the third day of the war. The operative situation in the Karabakh-Azerbaijan border zone and the future actions of the Armenian Armed Forces were discussed; therefore, the record of the session of the Security Council was confidential. Even Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan made a statement on the confidentiality of the record during yesterday’s parliamentary session, stating that “they will consider disclosing the part of the confidential record of the Security Council concerning Onik Gasparyan”. This means that the confidential record of the session of the Security Council was disclosed by the order of Nikol Pashinyan.

According to the Law of Armenia on State and Official Secret, information constituting state and official secret and is “confidential” shall be kept as a secret for up to 10 years starting from the moment that it is encrypted. According to the same law, information can be decrypted in the case of two grounds: international commitments of Armenia to openly exchanging information constituting state and official secret, change of objective circumstances as a result of which further maintenance and protection of information constituting state and official secret becomes inappropriate. Until this moment, there is no datum showing that Armenia has any international commitment to decrypt the record of a session of the Security Council linked to the war, and as far as change of objective circumstances is concerned, perhaps throwing the blame for not stopping the war and for the defeat on the former command of the army has become an ‘objective’ issue for the authorities ahead of the elections. Perhaps it is in this context that Pashinyan thought it is no longer appropriate to keep information constituting state and official secret, or the Prime Minister simply has never read and doesn’t have command of any one of these laws.

According to Article 306 of the Criminal Code, disclosing information constituting state secret intentionally by the person who had the right to become familiar with the state secret and who was trusted with the information or who knew about it after being in service, shall be punished with arrest for a term of two to three months, or with imprisonment for a term of maximum four years, with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or be involved in certain activities for a term of maximum three years.