[Armenian News note: the below is translated from the Armenian edition of news.am]
Armenia's Criminal Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court's decision that investigators violated former President Robert Kocharyan's rights, when they froze his assets last year, News.am said on 24 July.
Kocharyan's bank accounts were frozen in July 2018 days after he was first arrested on charges of overturning the constitutional order stemming from the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.
Acting on a lawsuit filed by Kocharyan, a first instance court in Yerevan ruled on 7 June that the asset seizure constituted a violation of his rights. The Prosecutor General's Office considered the decision unlawful and appealed appealed against it at a higher court. The Criminal Court of Appeals, however, rejected the appeal and left the lower court's decision unchanged, the website said.
Kocharyan, who attended the hearing, complained that he had been unable to pay his legal costs during all this period. He said he had been forced to rely on the financial support of his relatives, which, he said, was not an "honourable thing" for him to do.
"This is a practice, when a person is deprived of everything, as well as of the possibility to defend himself, probably with an intention to intimidate and reach some aims," Kocharyan was quoted as saying.
Asked why the investigators had taken 27,000 dollars from his lock box, Kocharyan told the judge that it was probably because of the shock.
"I think because of the shock. When they opened the safe and saw not 4bn but only 27,000, they were shocked," Kocharyan was quoted as saying.
As the judge reprimanded Kocharyan for ironical remarks, noting that the investigators were doing their job, Kocharyan said that he was free to use the language he wanted to defend himself.
"My rights have been violated for a year, they are being violated in an impudent way, and I have the right to speak out about it," News.am quoted Kocharyan as saying.