"WE’RE NOT EXPECTING AMNESTY"

10/03/2/pashinyan
06:12 pm | March 02, 2010 |

Tomorrow the Appeals Court will hear the appeal filed by Nikol
Pashinyan’s advocates against the verdict reached by the first
instance court.

In an interview with "A1+", advocate Lusine Sahakyan did not express
any hope that there would be a change tomorrow.

"We no longer have hope in the judicial system and have no
expectations from tomorrow’s trial. We just need to use all
governmental instances to appeal to the European Court. Of course, it
would be wonderful for us to be mistaken and to have the Appeals Court
reach a fair verdict for Nikol Pashinyan," said Sahakyan. Nikol
Pashinyan has been sentenced to 7 years in prison.

Lusine Sahakyan finds it strange that people are talking about the
need for Nikol’s amnesty. "It is very bad to see people talking about
the act of applying or not applying amnesty. We must expect the
verdict of justice and not amnesty."

Nikol Pashinyan’s advocate added that if the judicial act were legal,
the first instance court would be obliged to apply amnesty, which it
hasn’t.

Lusine Sahakyan said she was surprised by the Prosecutor General’s
statement according to which they would protest in the case of no
amnesty.

"I don’t know what the prosecutor meant when he said that amnesty
would be applied after the verdict went into effect. There can be no
amnesty after the verdict is in effect. In that case, who will apply
the verdict? Everything is clearly stated in the Amnesty
Proclamation," said Lusine Sahakyan and concluded that if the
prosecution is truly concerned about the application of amnesty for
Pashinyan, it had to at least a demand for amnesty along with the
protest-appeal.

Let us remind that prosecutor Harutyun Harutyunyan has also filed a
protest to the Appeals Court, demanding to reach an accusatory verdict
under Part 1, Article 316 of the RA Penal Code (assault against a
state representative).