“The term political prisoner already sums up the essence of the problem. It is fixed by PACE resolutions. The fact that the lawyer says change the measure of restraint, this, sorry, is not about a political prisoner, but about a legal dispute,” said Vahagn Hovakimyan, a member of the Civil Contract party, at a briefing with journalists in the National Assembly on January 25.
The newly elected ombudsman Kristine Grigoryan said on Monday that there are no political prisoners in Armenia, and the opposition insisted that they are political prisoners, for example, the commander of the “Sisakan” detachment Ashot Minasyan and the former mayor of Goris Arush Arushanyan. “There are no political prisoners in Armenia and there won’t be any more,” Vahagn Hovakimyan insisted.
Another Civil Contract MP, Artur Hovhannisyan, mentioned that the opposition’s comments on the arrests are always the same. “They are either considered to be instances of political persecution, or it turns out that the detainee has some health problems, and the complaints are submitted on that basis. These are political assessments. During the administration of today’s opposition, there were political prisoners in Armenia, and that fact was also registered in international instances, in European courts. Their lawyers do not deny the accusations, but it is a matter of changing the measure of restraint.”
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Luiza Sukiasyan
