0 8000 12 11

The civil society members and lawyers have reiterated the incompliance of the corpus delicti of ‘torture’ in the RA Criminal Code with the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the need for legislative changes and amendments.

The HCA Vanadzor has as well raised this issue repeatedly. Also, in its analysis on the execution of the judgment on Virabyan v. Armenia and the Reference filed to the ECtHR Department for the Execution of Judgments in September, the HCA also mentioned the need to resolve this issue as a necessary condition for the complete execution of the judgment in question and as one of the most essential components of the RA policy against torture. In its response to the Reference above, the RA Ministry of Justice claimed having already drawn up an RA draft law on relevant changes and amendments to the RA Criminal Code, aimed at radically changing the article defining the crime of torture in compliance with Article 1 of the UN Convention against Torture.

Given the vein efforts of finding the above draft law in the Draft Legal Acts section of the RA Ministry of Justice website or other sources, the HCA Vanadzor submitted an inquiry on the draft law to the RA Ministry of Justice.

In response to the inquiry above, the RA Ministry of Justice stated that upon discussion with the competent agencies concerned, the amended version of draft law above was submitted for approval to the RA Government.

By prioritizing the participation of the interested individuals and organizations, along with the concerned authorities, in the process of legislative amendments and changes as an essential component of democracy, we consider it necessary to submit the draft law for public discussion and hereby present the draft law provided by the RA Ministry of Justice.