ArmInfo."I will not go down to the level of the lawyers of Robert Kocharyan and those who accuse the SIS of legal illiteracy," head of the Special Investigative Service of Armenia Sasun Khachatryan told journalists on August 2.
According to him, the decision to present the charge is so clear and justified that it is not clear to him, and in some cases, ridiculous, the manipulations of the defense side.
Robert Kocharyan, as Khachatryan said, is accused of forcibly overthrowing the constitutional order. The basis for presenting this accusation, he said, is the involvement of the army in political processes, which is prohibited by both the former and the current edition of the constitution. Involvement of the armed forces is permissible only in case of declaration of martial law, which was not done, he explained. "It's so obvious that speculations on this topic are not clear to me," Khachatryan pointed out.
As for the accusations that Kocharyan was summoned for interrogation as a witness, but on the spot "transformed" into the accused, Sasun Khachatryan noted that the criminal procedure is a dynamic process, and the status of a person is assessed on the basis of a comparison of the data at a specific moment. In this case, he said, if on the basis of the data already received, Kocharyan would have been questioned as a witness, the investigative body would violate his rights.
Touching upon the signatures collected by 41 deputies of the National Assembly for an application for Kocharyan's release on bail or a written undertaking not to leave the place, Khachatryan noted that the court and the prosecutor decide to be Kocharyan under arrest or to satisfy the petition of lawyers. However, in his opinion, Robert Kocharyan should be detained in order to ensure the completeness of the investigation and the exclusion of its unlawful influence on the participants in the criminal process.
Kocharyan's lawyers have repeatedly stated that the case is completely fabricated, and extremely illiterate.