The "Heritage Party" issued a statement today condemning the continued detention of opposition political leaders and labeling the policy as a vendetta conducted by the current regime. It called for all remaining political detainees to be released. It specifically called the arrest of "Haykakan Zhamanak" Editor Nikol Pashinyan, who voluntarily handed himself over to authorities on July 1 after being on the run for 16 months, as typical of the regime's closed mindedness and desire for revenge. The Heritage Party statement said that the government failed to prove to the Armenian people that it was ready to respect the laws of civil society and that the Armenian justice system had been transformed into a mechanism whose sole aim was to punish its citizens. The statement said that the continued detention of Pashinyan and others was a gross violation of the PACE resolutions which Armenia agreed to accept. It also touched upon the plight of National Assembly Deputy Khachatur Soukiasyan who faces arrest if he comes out of hiding despite the fact that there aren't any legal grounds for this. The statement says that the courts do the political bidding of the authorities and that a major challenge facing Armenia is a true separation of power between the various branches of government.