Your trusted source

The Standing Committee of the National Assembly on State and Legal Affairs discussed on 20 February during the committee session and defined to include the draft of the law on “making changes and supplements in the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia” in the agenda of four-day session of the NA. According to the law, amendments should be prepared for the articles 225 and 300 of the Criminal Code.

In this regard the Chairman of the State and Legal Affairs Committee, the head of the Armenian Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) David Harutyunyan made some clarifications to Panorama.am.

It is important to remind that on 23 January the Chairman of the National Assembly Hovik Abrahamyan signed a decree to establish a working group to draft amendments to the Criminal Code. By the order of the NA Chairman, the working group consists of David Harutyunyan, the Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee of the NA Armen Roustamyan, the Chairman of the European Integration Committee Avet Adonts, the member of the Financial-Credit and Budgetary Affairs Committee Artsruni Aghadjanyan.

To the question whether there was a necessity to make amendments to the articles 225 and 300 of the Criminal Code, Mr. Harutyunyan notified that the mission was to make them correspond to some definite legal principles. According to him it was the Commissioner of Human Rights of the Council of Europe Thomas Hammarberg who spoke about the incomprehensibility of those articles.

In the spring of the previous year after his visit to Armenia the Commissioner made a report that in the frames of “March 1” case people were arrested based on the articles 225, 300 and 316 of the Criminal Code. He wrote that the Articles 225 and 300 of Criminal Code allowed for a very broad interpretation by the prosecution. In particular, the formulation of usurping the power “can have a broad interpretation and does not guide how to differentiate legal expression of opinion from violence.” Hence, it is remarkable that the problem to make changes in those articles has risen in the previous year, and it would be a delusion to consider them as the background of the case of seven arrested.

Moreover, criminal right, according to David Harutyunyan, is the most difficult branch of human right, regarding that it is difficult to make such formulations and definitions to avoid misunderstandings and broad interpretations.
How much does the implemented work correspond to those original principles put before the working group? David Harutyunyan assured that the group made all the efforts to clarify the incomprehensibility and the broad interpretation of those articles.

Regarding the Article 300, David Harutyunyan said that it was highly recommended to split the article into three articles, the 300th – “usurping the power”, the 300.1st - “breaking constitutional order”, and the 300.2nd – “breaking territorial integrity”.
The head of the working group stressed that there are serious shortcomings and incomprehensibilities in the formulations and the definitions of the current article. The notion of “usurping the power” has been made more comprehensible defining to assume, to take and to own the power of the President, National Assembly, Government and Constitutional Court.
The working group has recommended amendments to the Article 225 either. It was recommended to define “mass disorder” notion, and “the performer”, that is to say who has done the act. David Harutyunyan mentioned that the political coalition decided to leave the 1st, 2nd and 4th parts of the article unchanged.

In the end we would like to mention David Harutyunyan’s response to the member of ARF fraction Artsvik Minasyan’s opinion made by media in these days that “though David Harutyunyan has been trying to get maximum consensus to solve the problem, it is obvious that there are disagreements. I guess that the mission of establishing the group is unfulfilled.” (Note that Artsvik Minasyan was given an opportunity to participate in the activities of the working group by the decree of the NA Chairman). David Harutyunyan agreed with the first part of Minasyan’s concern saying that he has tried to guarantee maximum consensus. Mr. Harutyunyan added that those who were not members of the group but were present at the sessions were given opportunity to vote. The head of the working group did not agree with the statement that the problem remained unsolved. He said that the working group was ready and open to hear any solution from those who wished to. But if there are no recommendations, then Mr. Harutyunyan notified that perfect comprehensibility in the criminal right is not possible.