The rejection of the application on the early conditional release of Volodya Avetisyan has been submitted to the court of appeals

The Court of Appeal will examine the appeal on early conditional release on 17 May 2017 at 14:00.

Araks Melkonayn, Lawyer of the “Protection of Rights without Borders” NGO, advocate of freedom fighter Volodya Avetisyan applied to the Court of Appeals to appeal the decision N ԵԷԴ/0009/15/17 adopted by the First Instance Court or Erebuni and Nubarashen Administrative District on 14 April of 2017 on the rejection of the early conditional release of Volodya Avetisyan. It should be mentioned that advocate Araks Melkonyan has previously applied to the First Instance Court of Erebuni and Nubarashen Administrative Districtto request early conditional release for Volodya Avetisyan. Volodya Avetisyan, accused and sentenced for 6 years of imprisonment on the groundsof fraud and attempts of fraud, has been presented for 6 times for early conditional release, but in all cases, the Independent Commission rejected all the application through the intervention of the administration of the penitentiary without any grounded justification.

The advocate of Volodya Avetisyanapplied to Court on the demand to solve the issue of the early conditional release of V. Avetisyanon the grounds that the Court is the only competent authority to discuss the necessity for serving the sentence by a person in the Republic of Armenia. Moreover, as stated by the advocate, the penitentiary administration has given a positive characteristic description for Volodya Avetisyan, which confirms that the purpose of the sentence is justified and that V. Avetisyan is not obliged to carry his further sentence. Meanwhile, the Court of Erebuni and Nubarashen Administrative Districtrejected the application on the grounds that “As prescribed by the RA Legislation, the Court is authorized to grant an earlyconditional release only through the motion of the body in charge of exercising the punishment and the latter can submit that application to the Court only after the approval of the decision madeon the submission of themotion by the Independent Commission”.

Advocate Melkonyan, says that according to international legal acts and RA Legislationas well as, a person can apply to court on the protection of his/her right to freedom regardless the decision made by the Independent Commission, therefore,the court should have conducted an examination and decided the issue of the early conditional release of Volodya Avetisyan.

It should be mentioned, that by the decision ԱԺՈ-080-Ն of 2013 an amnesty was granted to Volodya Avetisyan and the latter will be released on May 25 of 2017.