YEREVAN, MAY 22, ARMENPRESS. The Constitutional Court says it is currently carrying out a preliminary examination of a court's decision to suspend the criminal case against ex-President Robert Kocharyan and several other former officials.

“The application is in the examination’s preliminary stage”, the Constitutional Court said on Facebook.

A Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction earlier ruled to suspend the trial and forward the case to the Constitutional Court, after releasing Kocharyan from pre-trial detention. Kocharyan was freed after a court approved the personal guarantees of Artsakh’s President Bako Sahakyan and former President Arkady Ghukasyan, who vouched on May 16th that Kocharyan will not obstruct justice amid the ongoing trial into the deadly 2008 post-presidential election unrest. 

2nd President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who ruled the country from 1998 to 2008, spent two weeks in jail in summer of 2018, but was eventually freed. But on December 7, a higher court overruled the release and ordered him to be remanded into custody pending trial again.

Kocharyan, along with several other former officials, is charged with “overthrowing Constitutional Order” during the 2008 March protests in Yerevan when 8 protesters and 2 security officers died. The former President is accused of unlawfully ordering the military to intervene. He is also charged with bribery.

He vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan