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Remanding former President Robert Kocharyan into custody is necessary at the moment to ensure an independent investigation, Chief of the Special Investigation Service (SIS) of Armenia Sasun Khachatryan told reporters on Thursday.    

Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan was arrested for two months according to the Yerevan court ruling issued on 27 July.

The SIS chief says the measure of restraint chosen during a probe is based on the necessity to ensure the defendant’s proper conduct.

“There is a misunderstanding that it is simply aimed at ruling out the possibility to escape. But they always forget the second and, I believe, a more important factor that a component of the proper behaviour is ruling out an illegal influence of the defendant on the individuals involved in the proceedings,” he said. “Therefore, I think remanding Robert Kocharyan into custody is necessary at the moment.”

The SIS chief also issued clarifications why the ex-leader was summoned for questioning as a witness over the 2008 March 1 post-election violence in Armenia, but later was involved as a defendant in the same case, 

He says the decision to change his status from a witness to a defendant does not violate the law, since the criminal proceedings are a dynamic process, and new evidences can emerge at any moment. “A person’s status is determined on combining these evidences. There is no violation here. Immediately when an investigative operation was to be conducted, he was notified of having the status of a defendant, otherwise if he had been questioned as a witness, it would have been a violation,” he said.

Khachatryan also touched upon some strong reactions against Kocharyan’s arrest, with the ex-president’s attorneys slamming the charges as a ‘political prosecution’.

“The decision on the indictment is so clear, simple and well-grounded that the manipulations attempted by the defense representatives are incomprehensible, sometimes even ridiculous to me. 

“Robert Kocharyan is charged with overthrowing the constitutional order. The army’s involvement in political processes has served as a basis for filing such charges against him. Both the previous and the current editions of the Constitution prohibit the military involvement in political processes,” he said, highlighting only a military state declared in the country could make it permissible to mobilize the armed forces, but it was not declared in Armenia during that time.

The Special Investigative Service officially charged Robert Kocharyan in the scope of the criminal investigation into the so-called March 1 events – the post-presidential election crackdown in 2008, which left eight civilians and two police officers dead.

Kocharyan, who served as Armenia’s president at a time of March 1, 2008, declared a 20-day state of emergency, with the approval of the Armenian parliament, banning future demonstrations and charged for “illegally mobilizing Armenia’s Armed Forces against peaceful demonstrators,” that was qualified as a “breach of constitutional order.”