Volodya Avetisyan

The Decision of the RA Court of Cassation on Volodya Avetisyan’s Case

On October 11 of 2017, the RA Court of Cassation made a decision on the rejection of instituting a proceeding on the appeal of Volodya Avetisyan’s case submitted by Araks Melkonyan, legal expert of the “Protection of Rights without Borders” NGO.

According to the decision made by the RA Court of Cassation, the arguments of the complaint were not sufficient to conclude that there is apparent judicial violation with such infringement of material or procedural rights that could have effect the outcomes of the case.

The demand of the cassation appeal was to completely overturn the ԵԷԴ/0009/15/16 decision made by the RA Criminal Court of Appeal dated May 17 of 2017 by recognizing the violation of Volodya Avetisyan’s right to liberty and legal protection.

Particularly, the application on the early conditional release of Volodya Avetisyan made by the RA Criminal Court of Appeals was not subjected to investigation and complaint was rejected due to artificial procedural circumstances, which led to the violation of Volodya Avetisyan’s right to liberty and legal protection.

The demand of the complaint was based on the guarantees and criteria of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), according to which, when the question regarding the detention of a person or its continuation is being discussed, the domestic legislation, which is cited, should correspond the requirements of the Convention, to the principals of the rule of law and particularly to the Article 5 of the Convention that is the protection from the arbitrariness.

Meanwhile, analysing the Armenian legal regulations regarding the early conditional release in the light of ECHR guarantees and criteria, it is stated that the domestic regulations do not correspond to the criteria and guarantees under Article 5 of the Convention.
According to Article 5 of the Convention, within the circle of the protection, a judicial mechanism for the protection of a person’s right to liberty is prescribed, but simultaneously, according to the directive of the RA President, the exercise of the right to judicial protection is mediated by the obligatory decision made by another judicial body, which makes it impossible to review the issue regarding his/her right to liberty in judicial order. That is, the review of the continuation of a person’s detention cannot be discussed by the court, if the Independent Commission have not approved the later.

The right of a person to file an application to the court on the ground to discuss the legitimacy of the continuation of detention is the constitutional and conventional right of Volodya Avetisyan, which should have been guaranteed by the domestic court and which was not exercised.
According to the RA Legislation, including the RA Constitution and RA Criminal Code, the court is the exclusive the body, which is vested with the authority to discuss the issue of the early conditional release and release of a person and the disapproval of any judicial body cannot be considered as a ground to discuss and solve the issue of the early conditional release. Therefore, both the Court of General Jurisdiction of Erebuni and Nubarashen Administrative Districts of Yerevan and RA Criminal Court of Appeals made a violation of Volodya Avetisyan’s right to liberty and judicial protection (judicial remedy), since an investigation of the complains was not carried out by the court and the complaint was exclusively rejected with artificial reasoning.

It should be mentioned, that Volodya Avetisyan, who is sentenced to 6 year imprisonment, has been presented for early conditional release to the Independent Commission for 6 times, but the petition of the penitentiary institution’s administration was rejected without justification in all cases.