The Court of Appeals reversed the Administrative Court’s ruling: “There are no legislative grounds to reject provision of the information required under those paragraphs”
18:18, November 25, 2016 | News, Own news
As already reported, upon examining HCA Vanadzor’s appeal on compelling the National Security Service under the RA Government to provide the requested information, the Court of Administrative Appeals ruled on November 15, 2016 to reverse in part the RA Administrative Court’s judgment of March 22, 2016 by compelling the National Security Service under the RA Government to provide the information required under Para. 1.1.7 and 1.1.10 of HCA Vanadzor’s inquiry, which concern, respectively, introduction to RA the current international practices of video-recording the questionings and creating special rooms for questioning minor witnesses and victims.
Despite the defendant’s position that the information required by the 2 paragraphs above was subject to provision, the Administrative Court nevertheless, misinterpreted the provisions of the RA Law on State and Official Secret and considered the required information to contain official secret and rejected its provision.
Moreover, in its ruling to reject HCA Vanadzor’s claim, the Administrative Court made no mention of the said paragraphs, whereas it had to refer to each paragraph separately.
In this regard, in its ruling on granting the appeal in part, the RA Court of Appeals particularly notes as follows: “As truly noted by the plaintiff party, the contested judicial act has no mention of provision of the information requested in Para. 1.1.7 and 1.1.10 of the inquiry” and then concludes that “there are no legislative grounds to reject provision of the information required under those paragraphs.”
As for the information required under the other paragraphs of the inquiry, it should be noted that it exclusively concerned the number of the trainings and courses organized by the National Security Service, the divisions that attended them, the topics of the trainings and the results of the assessment of their impact which may not be considered secret information in the sense of the RA Law on State and Official Secret and has nothing to do with the rapid-response and investigative actions and therefore cannot damage the RA security.
However, according to the Court, it is the agency possessing the information, namely the National Security Service under the RA Government that should assess the security of disclosing such information.
Thus, the Court of Appeals ruled to change the RA Administrative Court’s judgment of March 22, 2016 in terms of the information requested under Para. 1.1.7 and 1.1.10 of the inquiry and seize 7.000 AMD from the National Security Service under the RA Government in favor of HCA Vanadzor as a partial refund for the state duty paid for submitting a claim and an appeal.
The ruling of the Court of Appeals will be appealed on the part of the non-provided information before the RA Cassation Court.