Path of Law

“Path of Law” NGO won the court case of “Sut Nikol”

To remind, on April 15, 2019, at around 6:30 am, a group of citizens staged a political protest by writing “Sut Nikol” on different parts of the streets of Yerevan. The aim of the political action was to inform the citizens that the political force in power made false political promises during the pre-election period.

 RA police prevented that political action: the participants were taken to the Central Division of the Yerevan City Police Department where they were kept for 3 hours. As a result, the protest’s participants were made subject to administrative penalties under Article 172.2 of the RA Code of Administrative Offenses of 20,000 AMD fine.

Research done by the” Path of Law” NGO has found that citizens had previously done such writings on the streets and other public places before the 2018 change of power including political criticism; however, there was no evidence that such administrative action was taken.

In particular, it was found that in the period from 2017-2019 Article 172.2 of the RA Code of Administrative Offenses was applied only to five persons, all of which was in the second half of 2018. That is to say, that Article 172.2 of the RA Code of Administrative Offenses has only been applied in the Republic of Armenia since the change of power in 2018. Until then such actions were tolerated by the state.

On July 12, 2019, th”Path of Law” NGO filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the decisions taken by the Central Division of the Yerevan Police Department, claiming the interests of Ishkhan Khosrovyan and Vrezh Sargsyan from the action in administrative and judicial bodies.

Today, the RA Administrative Court upheld the request of David Avagyan, lawyer of the “Path of Law” NGO, to annul the decision # 028 of June 12, 2019 of the Central Division of the RA Police, considering it not legitimate.