COMMITTEE FOR PROTECTION OF POLITICAL PRISONERS FIRES BACK AT PROSECUTOR GENERAL AGHVAN HOVSEPYAN

Tert.am
15:04 07.05.10

Committee for Protection of Political Prisoners has released a
statement in response to a statement recently made by the Prosecutor
General of the Republic of Armenia Aghvan Hovsepyan.

The statement recalls that Hovsepyan said recently that "there are no
political prisoners in Armenia at all" and that all those considered
by the oppositionist powers as political prisoners have been sentenced
for criminally punitive actions.

Further is says that no despotic state in the world has so far
acknowledged that it has political prisoners and that in that term
Armenia is not an exception.

"Committee for Protection of Political Prisoners of Armenia considers
it worth stating that it is not the Prosecutor General of Armenia,
recognized as a non-democratic state in the world, that should
recognize the political prisoners as such … Especially that
prosecutor or prosecutors who issued written instructions to their
subordinate bodies to carry out persecutions toward opposition
candidates and their supporters during pre-election periods, who
themselves make lawful citizens turn into political prisoners … who
upon the order of the ruling authorities arrest absolutely innocent
people sentence and torture them for their political views" reads
the statement.

It also says that it is by the Prosecutor General’s personal
involvement that "14 political prisoners are still kept under
detention" and that it is upon his instructions that relevant articles
from the Criminal Code of Armenia were illegally chosen for those to
be sentenced.