Epress.am News from Armenia
In Armenia, there are 104 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, which is quite a large number for this country of two-and-a-half million people. Among other countries with similar population figures, in Estonia, there are 6 lifers and in Slovakia, there are 4, said analyst Zaruhi Muradyan during a discussion today on the issues of prisoners sentenced for life that was organized by the Armenian Helsinki Committee.
During the discussion, findings from the work of the Civil Initiative to Support Prisoners Sentenced to Life, which draw conclusions from analyzing cases in Armenia and compare the situation with those in other countries.
Muradyan pointed out that though lifers in Armenia are not a homogenous group — there are differences such as the prisoner’s age when he committed the crime and whether he has any previous convictions — these factors are not taken into consideration and there are no differences in legislation.
Consider: out of 104 lifers, 100 are in legal force. Out of this 100, 41 were imprisoned for murdering a single individual, 26 of whom for which it was their first conviction. Out of these 26, two have served 15 years of their sentence. Out of 100 lifers, 15 were sentenced for crimes committed during their military service, when they were just 18–20 years old.
According to participants of today’s discussion, neglecting these circumstantial particularities in legislation has resulted in no differences in the court rulings they were given. Considering this flaw, the Civil Initiative to Support Prisoners Sentenced to Life ended the discussion with several proposals, including: to make early conditional parole conditions flexible, considering the lifer’s age at the time of the crime and the number of convictions. Furthermore, considering the fact that after adoption of the new Criminal Code in 2003 and amendments to the code in May 23, 2011, criminal cases have not been reviewed, the group also urged practical reviews of these cases to begin.