On 3 October, the
National Assembly unanimously adopted the Decision “On Granting Amnesty
Announced in Respect to the 22^nd Anniversary of Independence”
proposed by President of the Republic
of Armenia. All 102 parliament
members present at the session voted for adoption of the decision.

The decision will
enter into force after it is signed by the President and published.

According to the
Minister of Justice, the amnesty will be applicable to around 1300 person:
400-500 persons will be immediately released, and for the rest the term of
imprisonment will be reduced. The process of implementation of the amnesty will
until 25 December.

The amnesty is applicable
only to those persons, who committed a crime prior to 1 September 2013.

Thus, the execution
of the punishment of the following persons will be lifted:

•those, who were
conditionally released of serving the punishment, or has been postponed,  

•those, whose
punishment was other than deprivation of liberty,

•those, who were
convicted to maximum three years of deprivation of liberty (there are exceptions),

•those, who were
convicted to maximum five years of deprivation of liberty (there are exceptions),

•those, who have the
first or second group of disability,

•those, who are 60
year old and older,

•those, who
committed a crime when they were under age of 18, and who have not been previously
convicted for intentional crime,

•those, who at the
moment of the adoption of this decision were pregnant or have a child up to
three year old,

•those, who
participated in the Second World War, military actions in defense of the
Republic of Armenia or Nagorno Karabakh (there are exceptions) and others.

The amnesty will be
applied also to persons, in the form of reduction of their sentence terms, who
committed grave crimes of particular nature, including, trafficking in human
beings, exploitation of people, unintentional cause of serious damage to
health, intentional infection with AIDS of other persons and other.

The amnesty will not
be applicable to those convicted for grave crimes (murder, crimes against
sexual integrity and freedom, circulation of drugs with the purpose of trade,
espionage, bandit actions, terrorism, sabotage, genocide and other), as well as
to persons serving life imprisonment.