The jailed opposition mayor of Goris, a community in Armenia’s Syunik Province, has been partially acquitted and released from custody.
The Syunik Court of General Jurisdiction, presided over by judge Gnel Gasparyan, delivered a ruling in Arush Arushanyan’s case on Monday.
The court found Arushanyan not guilty on vote-buying charges under Article 154.2 of Armenia's Criminal Code due to lack of evidence.
However, he was found guilty under Article 308 (abuse of office), Article 322 (arbitrariness) and Article 113 (intentionally causing medium gravity harm to health) of the Criminal Code, being forbidden to hold a position in the local government for 5 years.
Under one of the articles, Arushanyan was sentenced to 1.3 years, of which 8 months he had served, and the rest was considered suspended.
Thus, the judge ordered Arush Arushanyan's immediate release.
https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2022/03/28/Arush-Arushanyan/2659891
The opposition mayor of Goris, a community in Armenia’s Syunik Province, who was released from custody on Monday, vowed to continue his struggle for the homeland.
"In general, I do not consider myself a political prisoner, my struggle is not for politics. We have fought and will continue to fight to defend our homeland, to liberate the territories occupied by external and internal enemies," Goris Mayor Arush Arushanyan told reporters after leaving the court building.
Arushanyan assured that their struggle would continue “no matter what”.
"We will not have the moral right to live if we forget our compatriots who sacrificed their lives for our lands. We must remember not only our brothers who fell in the 44-day war, but also the members of the older generations who gave their lives defending our lands for thousands of years. Didn't they want to live? The homeland is above everything else. But we have to resolve the issue of the internal enemy first, and then the external enemy," he said.