“Only true criminals must stay in jail. There are people in jail who are innocent and who were sentenced through illegal means, or who received a stronger sentence than necessary,” said the spokesperson for the ‘Sasna Tsrer’ group Varuzhan Avetisyan in a press conference.
He called upon authorities to look at all these cases again one by one. “We don’t trust law enforcement agencies’ former authorities.”
Avetisyan noted that, on August 1st, 2003, the criminal code changed and a new one was agreed upon. Robert Kocharyan was the president at the time. “There were 42 people who were sentenced to death, but with the new criminal code, they were instead sentenced life in prison. Everyone knows that decisions made to take away more of a person’s legal rights cannot be reversed. Robert Kocharyan illegally accepted this decision. Many of those people who have been imprisoned for over 20 years need to be freed because the criminal code in place during their sentencing stated that, if a person is given a life sentence instead of the death penalty, then the longest amount of time they can be in jail is for 20 years.”
Jirair Sefilian added, “People are illegally being kept in jail.”
Hripsime Jebejyan
