Constitutional Court: former president Kocharyan may have charges against him altered

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YEREVAN, July 23. /ARKA/. Armenia’s Constitutional Court partially granted the petition of the Cassation Court in a trial against former President Robert Kocharyan, the Lurer website reported on Tuesday./pp

The Cassation Court, addressing the case involving Kocharyan, former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, former Chief of the General Staff, ex-Secretary General of the CSTO Yuri Khachaturov, and former Chief of the Presidential Staff and ex-Deputy Prime Minister Armen Gevorgyan, requested the Constitutional Court to determine whether certain articles of the Criminal Procedure Code were constitutional./pp

The focus was on Part 3 of Article 309.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code (adopted in 1998 and partially still in effect), which prohibits the reclassification of charges in court if the article under which the charges were originally brought is deemed unconstitutional./pp

The Constitutional Court ruled that while the article in the Criminal Procedure Code conforms to the Constitution, the prosecution may alter the charges if the accused's actions exhibit elements of other offenses defined by the Criminal Code./pp

This implies that the charges against Kocharyan and other high-ranking officials must be reclassified./pp

Another part of the Cassation Court's petition was rejected./pp

In April 2021, a Yerevan court dropped the charges of overthrowing the constitutional order against Kocharyan, Ohanyan, Khachaturov, and Gevorgyan./pp br/pp br/p