RA General Prosecutor Artur Davtyan suggested creating constitutional and legal grounds for the death penalty for state treason.

In a conversation with Radar Armenia, human rights activist Nina Karapetyants stated that she is against the death penalty. According to him, history, past journeys, and experience have shown that people were shot by order or by mistake in many cases. "And finally, depriving a person of his life is not given to him."

Referring to the proposal of the Prosecutor General of RA, Karapetyants said that from the moment we would have such justice implementing bodies capable of providing the minimum threshold of fairness, maybe that proposal will be understandable. "I think this is not his idea, and the purpose of this is to put pressure on all the cases that are always artificially initiated, both before and now. This is also a way of using another baton. I suppose that the existing batons are not enough for the Prosecutor General. Interestingly, the prosecutor decided to carry out such an action less than five minutes before leaving."

According to him, there are many more critical issues that the Prosecutor General does not want to see in principle, or the Prosecutor's Office fails in such cases as the cases of soldiers killed in non-combat conditions. "In many cases, the prosecutor's office resists because it needs to protect real criminals. So, before applying the death penalty, the prosecutor's office has a lot of internal work. I think RA General Prosecutor Artur Davtyan revealed his true face less than five minutes before leaving because a person cannot wish someone else's death."

Referring to the provision mentioned in the prosecutor's proposal that the prosecutor's office has studied the field of international commitments of Armenia related to this field, and it has been found that Armenia does not have a direct international legal obligation to establish an absolute ban on the death penalty, the human rights defender said that one of the requirements for PACE membership was the abolition of the death penalty. And that was the reason why it was suspended in the 90s.

According to Nina Karapetyants, the prosecutor could submit such an application if convinced that the prosecutor's office, the courts, the National Security Service, and the Investigative Committee are operating exceptionally and efficiently.

Hayk Magowan