0 8000 12 11

By its judgment of April 20, 2016, the RA Administrative Court rejected the claim of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor against Vigen Sargsyan, Head of Staff of the RA President, by which HCA Vanadzor required to compel V. Sargsyan to provide the complete information requested by the Organization’s inquiry of June 29, 2015 and particularly information on how many persons were awarded weapons by RA President in 1992-1998 and the data (names and surnames) of the persons awarded weapons by the RA President within 1992-2015.

Note that in response to the Organization’s inquiry, the Staff of the RA President provided information on the number of the persons awarded weapons by the RA President only in 1998-2015 and refused to provide the data of such persons on the pretext that they contained information on the privacy of such persons and were not subject to disclosure.

The Court considered the defendant’s position lawful and dismissed the claim considering it unfounded.

In its appeal, HCA Vanadzor substantiated the fact that the court judgment violated the plaintiff’s rights and misinterpreted the provisions of the RA Law on Personal Data Protection.

In particular, the appeal stated that the name and surname of a person are considered public information and obtaining such information excludes identification of the person. As for not possessing some of the information requested, the defendant failed to prove this in any way; when making its judgment, the court did not pay due attention to this and moreover referred therein to a similar position of the defender without providing any justification.

It should be added that HCA Vanadzor also submitted to the RA Government a similar inquiry on the information of the data of persons awarded weapons by the RA Prime Minister, which was rejected as well.