More than three years after declaring coup charges brought against Robert Kocharyan unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court has given the green light for another trial of Armenia’s former president sought by prosecutors.
Kocharyan, his former chief of staff Armen Gevorgyan and two retired army generals were prosecuted in connection with a 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan. A district court cleared them of the “overthrow of the constitutional order” in April 2021 ten days after the Constitutional Court ruled that their indictment under a relevant article of the Criminal Code breached the Armenian constitution.
The trial prosecutors appealed against the acquittal, saying that they must be allowed to charge the defendants with abuse of power also related to the events of March 2008. The Court of Appeals upheld the acquittal, leading the prosecutors to take their case to the higher Court of Cassation. The latter in turn appealed to the Constitutional Court in March this year.
In a ruling handed down on Monday and officially announced on Thursday, the Constitutional Court said Armenia’s Code of Procedural Justice allows the prosecutors to bring a different accusation stemming from the use of force against antigovernment protesters who clashed with security forces in Yerevan in March 2008. Eight protesters and two police personnel were killed in those clashes.
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One of Kocharyan’s lawyers, Hayk Alumian, denounced the ruling on Friday, saying that the high court overstepped its powers.
“Instead of interpreting the constitution, the Constitutional Court interpreted a particular law,” Alumian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He claimed that it did so in order to enable the Armenian authorities to resume Kocharyan’s “political persecution.”
Kocharyan was also charged with bribery before the start of his trial in 2019. He strongly denied that accusation as well.
The ex-president as well as Gevorgian continued to stand trial for the alleged bribery after the presiding judge, Anna Danibekyan, threw out the coup case in April 2021.
The trial ended without a verdict in December 2023, with Kocharyan invoking the statute of limitations that expired in May 2023. For the same reason, he will not go to jail if he is tried again and convicted in connection with the 2008 crackdown.
The Constitutional Court made its latest decision on the matter one week after Danibekyan was removed from the bench because of her handling of the high-profile trial. Armenia’s judicial oversight body led by a political ally of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian ousted the judge at the request of the Ministry of Justice.
Kocharyan, who is highly critical of Armenia’s current government, was first arrested in July 2018 shortly after the “velvet revolution” that brought Pashinian to power. He was set free on bail in June 2020. The 69-year-old ex-president now leads the main opposition Hayastan alliance.
Pashinian was the main speaker at the 2008 protests marred by the deadly violence. He spent nearly two years in prison for his role in what the former Armenian authorities described as a plot to violently overthrow them.
