Alexander Kochubaev`s lawyer addresses open letter to RA Prosecutor  General

ArmInfo.  Alexander Kochubaev's lawyer, Erik Aleksanyan, sent an open letter to the Prosecutor General of Armenia, Anna Vardapetyan, calling for his  client's pretrial detention to be changed due to family  circumstances. 

"Dear Ms. Vardapetyan, given that the criminal case against lawyer  Alexander Kochubaev has not yet been submitted to court with an  indictment, I ask you to exercise your exclusive authority and lift  the pretrial detention measure against Alexander Kochubaev, as his  wife's health has sharply deteriorated since the birth of their  child. Considering that the above is a medical confidentiality, I  cannot publicly disclose the specific irreversible consequences that  arose in the Kochubaev family. However, the corresponding medical  certificate will be provided to you within a few minutes," Alesanyan  wrote in a statement published on his Facebook page.

Prominent lawyer and head of the law firm Contra Legem, Alexander  Kochubaev, was detained by security forces on October 16 as he left  the Shengavit Court, where a hearing was being held in the case of  Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and 17 other people accused by the  authorities. Moreover, pro-government Judge Masis Melkonyan has  already ordered the lawyer's detention for two months. The pretext  for this brutal detention, intended to exert psychological pressure  on the legal community supporting the Armenian Apostolic Church, was  his social media post, in which he made vulgar remarks about the law  enforcement system and the Armenian authorities themselves. The  lawyer also used a couple of obscene expressions, but according to  his colleagues who commented on the incident, none of them fall under  the Criminal Code as a non-personal insult. Apparently, these  statements greatly offended his former colleagues, as Kochubaev had  worked for a long time in the police system, and those who are now  ready to imprison the entire leadership of the Armenian Apostolic  Church for political reasons.