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On April 25, 2016, the RA Administrative Court, presided by judge T. Sahakyan, examined the appeal by HCA Vanadzor against the ruling of the General Jurisdiction Court of First Instance of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts of Yerevan city, RA dated March 12, 2016.

Note that by the ruling above, the General Jurisdiction Court dismissed the Organization’s complaint against the inaction (omission) by the RA Special Investigation Service in terms of its failure to carry out relevant investigation and to make a ruling on the report on stuffing or voting instead of absent people at the polling stations with 60 or higher percentage of voter turnout at the referendum of December 6, 2015.

The hearing of the RA Court of Criminal Appeals was attended by Ani Chatinyan, HCA Vanadzor lawyer and Organization’s representative on this case.

The presiding judge informed that a note received from the prosecutor of the RA Prosecutor General’s Office stated that he would not be able to attend the court hearing due to heavy workload and requested the Court to hold the hearing in his absence. A. Chatinyan did not object to holding the hearing in the absence of the representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The Court passed to the presentation of the contents of the ruling appealed and the merits of the appeal, after which A. Chatinyan took the floor to substantiate the appeal.

She presented arguments to the effect that the letter submitted by the Organization met the requirements of the report, since it contained information about falsification of the referendum results of December 6, 2015 and stuffing at the polling stations; such information was supported by the study of HCA Vanadzor related to the number of the voting turnover. In other words, not only was the crime report submitted by the Organization entitled “Crime Report”, but also it contained information about the crimes already committed. However, the agency responsible for the proceedings did not admit the crime report as such and failed to take the necessary investigative and procedural actions as prescribed by the RA Criminal Procedure Code. The representative of HCA Vanadzor found that the RA Special Investigation Service should have made a relevant decree as prescribed by relevant procedure, since in case of both initiating criminal proceedings and rejecting initiation of criminal proceedings, the legislator considered it binding to make a decision. A. Chatinyan also mentioned that making no relevant decision on the crime report submitted by the Organization constituted inaction/omission, and this fact was ignored by the lower court. Hence, A. Chatinyan requested the Court to reverse the ruling of the General Jurisdiction Court of First Instance of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts of Yerevan city, RA dated March 12, 2015 and send the case for re-examination.

Presiding judge T. Sahakyan stated that the RA Special Investigation Service expressed its position on the appeal stating that not every application was considered as a criminal report. The position above invoked the position expressed by the RA Court of Cassation to the effect that a person’s application might be viewed as a crime report if it contained specific elements of a crime.

A. Chatinyan insisted on the appeal above and requested the Court to uphold it.

Considering the examination of the application completed, the Court withdrew to the deliberation room to make a ruling. By its ruling announced shortly after, the Court rejected the appeal and upheld the judicial act of the lower court.