0 8000 12 11

On April 19, 2016, the RA Administrative Court, presided by judge H. Ayvazyan, resumed the trial proceedings on the administrative case under a claim by the RA Police against Gayane Arustamyan to bring her to administrative liability and the counter-claim by Gayane Arustamyan against the RA Police to declare the police actions unlawful.

Note that the previous court hearing was adjourned due to the end of the working day and for the plaintiff to submit a document to the Court.

The hearing was attended by Sona Melikyan, representative of counter-defendant RA Police, and Tatevik Siradeghyan, lawyer at Yerevan Office of HCA Vanadzor and representative of defendant and counter-plaintiff G. Arustamyan.

At the court hearing, S. Melikyan submitted to the Court the decree on discontinuing the criminal proceedings following the investigation into the criminal case by the RA Special Investigation Service. G. Arustamyan’s representative objected to the motion on attaching the document above to the case as evidence by mentioning that the decree above had not become legally effective yet since it was appealed by G. Arustamyan’s representative first to the RA Prosecutor General’s Office and then to a court of general jurisdiction. The ruling of the general jurisdiction court on dismissing the appeal was appealed to the RA Court of Criminal Appeals and has not been examined yet. Hence, T. Siradeghyan requested the Court not to attach the document above to the case.

The Court attempted to find out the establishment of which factual circumstances was aimed by submitting to the Court the decree on discontinuing the criminal proceedings. In response, S. Melikyan stated that the document above proved that the actions of the RA Police officers were not deemed illegal. Then S. Melikyan requested the Court to suspend the proceedings until the completion of the appeal process under the criminal proceedings.

G. Arustamyan’s representative made a statement that the criminal proceedings were initiated on the abuse of powers by the RA Police officers. At the same time, she mentioned that the lack of any elements of crime in their actions still did not attest to the lawfulness of their actions, since not every unlawful action contained corpus delicti.

Then S. Melikyan filed a motion with the Court requesting it to attach the evidence above to the case and refer to its relevance and admissibility in the final judicial act.

The Court decided to attach the document to the case, after which T. Siradeghyan requested the Court to give her an opportunity to submit evidence to the effect that the decree above was not effective, so that the Court could assess the relevance and admissibility of the document in question. Then S. Melikyan mentioned that she did not want the trial proceedings to be delayed and withdrew the document she had submitted.

At the trial, T. Siradeghyan asked the representative of the counter-defendant some questions regarding the time of arresting G. Arustamyan and the grounds for video-recording her. Then, till proceeding to the examination of evidence, T. Siradeghyan filed with the Court a motion to suspend the proceedings.

Particularly, in the motion above, T. Siradeghyan presented grounds to the effect that Article 172.3 of the RA Code of Administrative Offences, under which G. Arustamyan would be brought to administrative liability, contained no clarification of the concept of “insult”; given this, the defendant could not be brought to administrative liability for committing a deed which did not make it clear what kind of behavior could be deemed as misconduct and serve as a basis for applying measures of administrative liability. T. Siradeghyan invoked Article 39 of the RA Constitution, stating that everyone is free to do anything that does not violate the rights of others and does not violate the Constitution and laws and Article 79 stating that when limiting the basic rights and freedoms, the laws must be sufficiently definite so that the holders and addressees of such rights and freedoms were able to show relevant behavior.

Hence, T. Siradeghyan found that Article 172.3 was contrary to Article 79 of the RA Constitution and motioned to suspend the proceedings and apply to the RA Constitutional Court to rule on the compliance of Article 172.3 of the RA Code on Administrative Offences with Article 79 of the RA Constitution.

The representative of the RA Police objected to the motion and noted that the Article above had been introduced to the Code over 4 years before and many persons were brought to administrative liability, and no such issue arose.

T. Siradeghyan stated that the RA Constitutional Court considered the constitutionality of a provision only based on relevant application available and in the RA, only the Constitutional Court was competent to examine the constitutionality of a provision (provisions) of legal acts.

To consider the motion, the Court deemed it necessary to adjourn the hearing by scheduling it on May 6, 2016, at 2:45 pm.