Armenia’s Constitutional Court has rejected a petition filed by former commander of the Artsakh Defense Army Jalal Harutyunyan, stating that the issues raised are not subject to review by the court, Pastinfo reported.
As previously reported, Harutyunyan was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for military negligence during the 44-day war, which resulted in a death. The case concerns the so-called “Tsor episode.”
The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict of the first-instance court, while the Court of Cassation refused to examine the complaints. As a result, the sentence entered into legal force, and Harutyunyan was transferred to a penitentiary institution to serve his term.
An individual application was submitted to the Constitutional Court on Harutyunyan’s behalf raising several issues, including the question of jurisdiction.
According to the applicant, Armenian courts had given an excessively broad and autonomous interpretation to the concept of “judicial territory of the Republic of Armenia,” which he argued contradicts the essence of the Constitution’s preamble.
In his view, this interpretation resulted in including the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is not internationally recognized as part of Armenia, within the notion of “judicial territory.” Consequently, proceedings regarding an alleged crime committed in Nagorno-Karabakh were treated as a crime committed within Armenia’s judicial territory.
Harutyunyan requested that this interpretation be declared unconstitutional.
The petition also stated that this approach violated one of the key elements of a fair trial — the principle that a case must be examined by “a court established by law.”
In addition, the applicant challenged the interpretation of Part 3 of Article 550 of Armenia’s current Criminal Code.
According to Harutyunyan, the courts interpreted the provision in a way that expanded the scope of what is considered a criminal act, treating the consequences of “bad faith” as a criminal offense even though such conduct was not considered criminal at the time it was committed.
He argued that this effectively resulted in the retroactive application of a new criminal law, which, in his view, contradicts Article 72 of the Constitution and the right to personal liberty guaranteed by Article 27.
The applicant also raised the issue that his health condition is incompatible with detention.
The Constitutional Court rejected the petition, stating that the questions raised were not subject to its review.
The ruling notes that examining the issues in substance would require assessing the lawfulness of judicial acts issued by Armenian courts in criminal case No. SD1/0158/01/23, rather than evaluating the constitutionality of the disputed provisions or their interpretation — which falls outside the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court.
