Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that political prisoners are going to be released. However, how to decide, who is a political prisoner? Avetik Ishkhanyan, the chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Committee and human rights activist, said in this connection at the Media Centre that the problem of political prisoners was a vital issue at the moment.
"Artur Sakunts [a human rights activist and the head of the Vanadzor office of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly] and I have already discussed this and we can say, who political prisoners are: [Political activist] Andrias Ghukasyan [detained on 29 July 2016 on charges of a role in mass unrest] has already been released. Other political prisoners are Shant Harutyunyan [detained on 5 November 2013 after he addressed his supporters in the Freedom Square and called for the seizure of the presidential palace and other key government buildings] and his companions, who were awarded a disproportionate punishment, as at the very worst, the punishment should have been administrative. It is also Hayk Kyuregyan [arrested in June 2013 and sentenced to nine-year imprisonment for shooting near a court building in Yerevan], whose punishment was excessive, because this could have been regarded as a criminal offence, but it was excessive, so this can be regarded as a purely political persecution. Ararat Khandoyan [sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for his participation in the July 2016 clashes between the police and supporters of gunmen occupying a police station in Yerevan] can be regarded as a political prisoner. The three years he was sentenced to are exaggerated. There are also Karo Yeghnukyan [detained on 22 July 2016 for having contacts with the armed group that held hostages at a police station in Armenian capital Yerevan] and now also Garegin Chugaszyan [a leader of the radical Founding Parliament organisation, who was in hiding after the Sasna Tsrer (Daredevils of Sasun) radical opposition group seized a police compound in Yerevan in 2016 and was arrested on 24 April 2018], Zhirayr Sefilyan [sentenced on 20 March 2018 to 10.5 years in prison for planning mass riots and plotting armed seizure of buildings in Yerevan], [civil activist] Gevorg Safaryan [sentenced on 16 January 2017 to two years in prison on charges of assaulting a police officer], and Samvel Babayan [arrested in connection with an assassination attempt on the second president of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arkadi Ghukasyan and sentenced to six years in prison on 28 November 2017], particularly the last three people – Sefilyan, Safaryan, and Samvel Babayan, who were convicted on the basis of a fabricated case. This group must be acquitted unlike other cases. This is my opinion," [Avetik Ishkhanyan said].
As regards Sasna Tsrer, [a radical group that seized a police compound in Yerevan in 2016], Avetik Ishkhanyan said that the article on "change of circumstances" should be applied here and some of them should be released or released conditionally for the exception of the cases linked to the killing of policemen, where a fair legal process is necessary.
Artur Sakunts said, for his part, that the norm of early release should be applied to Shant Harutyunyan and his companions or a prosecutor should interfere in connection with new circumstances and change the case. He said that it was necessary to change the preventive measure regarding some personalities, but the whole process should be carried out on the legal basis. Releasing people without a legal approach is by no means different from imprisonment without a legal approach.