“The anti-terrorist operation targeted at the liberation of the RA Police Patrol Service Regiment area is over”, “20 terrorists were arrested”: These are excerpts from the statement issued by the National Security Service. Basically, the latter includes the verdict too. The NSS calls the armed group members “terrorists”, without taking into consideration the presumption of innocence.
According to the Article 217 of the RA Criminal Code, terrorism is an action aimed to cause death or serious physical injury to a civilian or a person who doesn’t actively participate in hostilities in an armed conflict, or in the case of a threat when such an action by its nature or essence is aimed at terrorizing the population or enforcing a public authority or an international organization or a high-ranking official to make certain decisions, perform an action or refraining from doing so, as well as any other act regarded as terrorism in the RA international agreements.
Attorney Hayk Aloumyan
Attorney Hayk Alumyan, analyzing yesterday’s announcement of the NSS, stated that it was not clear to him what kind of anti-terrorist operation the Service had carried out, if the armed group members came out and laid down their weapons on their own initiative: “First of all, I did not understand anything from their operation. If they just collected the guns and put handcuffs on those people then it’s hard to call that an anti-terrorist operation.” Furthermore, according to the lawyer, their actions do not contain elements of terrorism: “If we read the description of the article, it does not coincide with all those actions that we have seen during this period.”
Mr. Aloumyan stressed: “No matter what actions the gunmen have carried out, let’s put aside the policemen’s deaths. They willingly decided not to take it to the end and this means that they are subject to being absolved of criminal responsibility, if a crime is not detected in all the actions already done. As for the policemen’s death, the second police officer’s death, I consider it less likely to be connected with the group’s operations. I do not have much information, but judging by what is openly available, the chances are almost equal to zero that it could have been done by that group.”
Attorney Arayik Papikyan
Arayik Papikyan, the armed group member Arayik Khandoyan’s advocate, points out that by issuing that declaration the NSS violated the presumption of innocence which is of utmost importance: “Secondly, their actions do not fall within the Article 217. This understanding is based on my private conversation with Arayik Khandoyan and some factual circumstances which I can not disclose. The NSS should try to prove the contrary, but I believe that it will not be able to prove the opposite give that the investigation is objective.”
