Armenia's Court of Cassation has refused to admit for review the Prosecutor General's appeal concerning the clergy of the Aragatsotn Diocese. The announcement was made by lawyer Ara Zohrabyan on his Facebook page.

The case concerns a report alleging the forcible detention of priests from the Aragatsotn Diocese, obstruction of lawyers who sought to provide them with legal assistance, and the alleged concealment of the arrest of Archbishop Mkrtich of the Aragatsotn Diocese. The investigator declined to initiate criminal proceedings, and the prosecutor upheld that decision after rejecting the lawyers' appeal.

According to Zohrabyan, the Yerevan Court of First Instance of General Jurisdiction (Judge Tatevik Muradyan) upheld the complaint and ordered the investigative body to adopt a procedural decision remedying the applicant's rights violation by initiating criminal proceedings based on Ara Zohrabyan's report.

The prosecutor appealed that ruling, but the Criminal Court of Appeal (Judge Vazgen Rshtuni) dismissed the appeal.

Prosecutor General Anna Vardapetyan then filed an appeal with the Court of Cassation. The Court of Cassation decided not to admit the Prosecutor General's appeal for review.

Zohrabyan said the courts expressed two important legal positions in the case.

Referring to Article 491 of Armenia's Criminal Code, which criminalizes obstructing a lawyer's professional duties by unlawfully preventing access to any place of deprivation of liberty to meet a client, he said the investigative body and the prosecution had interpreted the provision narrowly. They argued that only penitentiary institutions or temporary detention facilities qualify as places of deprivation of liberty and maintained that the priests had been present at the investigative body only as witnesses.

The court, however, considered the decisive factor to be whether the individuals had been deprived of their liberty in practice, regardless of their formal procedural status. It stated:

"The court finds that the crime report contains factual allegations that the individuals were 'brought' to the relevant subdivision of the Investigative Committee, meaning they were taken there for questioning not as a result of their own free will. Therefore, in this case, the relevant subdivision of the Investigative Committee may be regarded as a place of deprivation of liberty."

The court also stated:

"The court notes that the complainant specifically alleged that lawyers Armine Fanyan, Marine Farmanyan, and Shushanik Harutyunyan were denied entry to the relevant subdivision of the Investigative Committee and prevented from meeting their clients. Under these circumstances, it is unclear how the investigative body concluded within an extremely short procedural period that the report and the attached documents contained no factual data, that the complainant's allegations were unsubstantiated, and that there was no need to initiate criminal proceedings."

The post also refers to Article 451 of Armenia's Criminal Code on enforced disappearance, which covers denying or concealing the deprivation of liberty of a person by state officials or others acting with state authorization, support, consent, or acquiescence.

The court noted that the crime report contained factual allegations that the investigative body had not informed defense lawyers of the detainee's whereabouts and that the information became available only through employees of the Human Rights Defender's Office.

According to the post, the court further found that the lack of any information within a reasonable period about the person's whereabouts or legal status, with that information becoming available only after the intervention of the Human Rights Defender's Office, constituted a sufficient body of factual data requiring verification. The court held that such verification could only be carried out through the initiation of criminal proceedings and the conduct of the necessary investigative and evidentiary actions.