“The message concerning dangerous offenders is common to all of Europe”,- in interview with Aravot.am said professor in Criminal Law Carlos Maria Romeo-Casabona.
According to him the purpose is to harmonize the rights to have similar responses in every country, because it will help to the cooperation, for instance the matters like extradition, judicial cooperation, police cooperation.
“Most important concern of the Council of Europe is respect human rights and freedoms, including also the criminals. So it is not so easy to fight and prevent crimes and at the same time to respect the rights of the offenders”,- said Romeo-Casabona.
Talking about pretrial custody, Carlos Maria Romeo-Casabona said that in his opinion it is an extreme tool which can be used in very exceptional conditions. “I mean very-very grave crimes, not when the risk assessment is not clear, there should be objective evidences that the offender will again commit the same crimes. I don’t think that it can be used as a solution for every dangerous offender, only these exceptional persons that the penalty for them is not a solution, because they don’t care. But in these cases we have the opportunity to treat them with necessary means which they would need. The danger for this kind of measures is that the politicians think that the solution is to put all of them in prison, and forget about them, this is not the solution. We are not allowed to forget that they are still citizens. But they committed a crime, a very serious crime, so we also need to protect us”.
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In question that has he studied Armenian experience, Carlos Maria Romeo-Casabona answered no, but he considers that Armenia as a member of Council of Europe has to respect the European convention on human rights and fundamental freedoms, as every state in Europe.
Ami CHICHAKYAN
