UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW

An assessment by group of civil society organizations of government’s performance in implementation of UPR recommendations

Shadow Interim Progress Report

(September 2010 – December 2012)

ANNEX I: CASES OF ALLEGATIONS OF TORTURE AND INHUMAN OR DEGRADINGTREATMENT

Case 1. On 12 March 2008, the criminal case initiated in relation to Levon Gulyan’s death was dismisseddue to the “absence of corpus delicti” (according to the official hypothesis, Levon Gulyan died on 12 May 2007 while trying to escape from the police by jumping from the 2nd floor). Subsequently, on 6 June 2008, the General Jurisdiction Court of the Kentron and Nork-Marash communities of the Republic of Armenia decided to resume the investigation in Gulyan’s case. On 21 July 2008, the Criminal Appellate Court of the Republic of Armenia upheld the decision of the General Jurisdiction Court of the Kentron and Nork-Marash communities and rejected the appeal of the Prosecution Office.

In 2009, the Prosecution Office of the Republic of Armenia once again discontinued the criminal case related to Gulyan’s death. Again, the first instance and appellate courts rejected the appeal by the agent for the victim’s legal successor to resume the criminal case proceedings. Subsequently, the Cassation Court of the Republic of Armenia decided on 27 August 2010 to quash the first instance and criminal appellate court decisions in the criminal case investigated in respect of the death of Levon Gulyan who died on 12 May 2007 in the backyard of the Police administrative building under questionable circumstances, and again returned the case for pre-trial investigation. In its decision, the court required the pre-trial investigation body (special investigative service, which was the last to investigate the criminal case) to eliminate the violation of the right of Gulyan’s legal successor, to terminate the decision to discontinue the case, and to conduct pre-trial investigation.

Case 2. On 13 April 2010, VahanKhalafyan was apprehended to the police on charges of committing theft. After some hours, he was stabbed in the abdomen and, according to the official hypothesis, taken to a hospital in an ambulance, where he died. The forensic medical examination of VahanKhalafyan’s body showed signs of violence towardshim. Two knife woundsand scratches were found around the abdomen, and traces of violence on the legs. Four officers of the criminal intelligence unit of Charentzavan (Ashot Harutyunyan, head of the criminal unit, and MorisHayrapetyan, Gagik Davtyan, and Garik Ghazaryan, all criminal intelligence officers) were charged with exceeding and abusing their official powers, and the case was sent to court. The trial in the case ended, and on 29 November 2010, the court was due to publish its judgment. The prosecutor demanded convicting Ashot Harutyunyan, as the primary accused, to eight years of imprisonment, MorisHayrapetyan to two years of conditional imprisonment, and Gagik Davtyan and Garik Ghazaryan to one year each. Artak Zeynalyan, the victim’s legal successor, stated in court that VahanKhalafyan had experienced clinical death, after which they had inserted the knife in his abdomen to make it look like suicide.

Case 3. On 24 October 2010, inmate SlavikVoskanyan (who had been arrested on 7 October on charges of murder) died in the Vanadzor Penitentiary Institution. On 10 October, he had been transferred to the Vanadzor Penitentiary Institution. Before his death, on 18 October, SlavikVoskanyan had sent a letter from the prison to the Vanadzor Office of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, in which he had elaborated on the crimes attributed to him and had provided exculpatory facts.

According to the report disseminated by the Vanadzor Office of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, Voskanyan had provided, in his letter, a detailed account of the psychological pressure and physical violence that the law-enforcement officers had imposed on him in the Vanadzor Police PHAP (“place for holding arrested persons”) prior to his transfer to the penitentiary institution. He had informed that, in the office of the Vanadzor Police chief, where the detainee had received a visit by his wife, the Police chief had threatened, after the wife left, that his wife would never reach home. Based on a letter of the inmate, the Helsinki Office filed a report with the Special Investigative Service of the Republic of Armenia and the General Prosecution Office of the Republic of Armenia.

Case 4. According to a letter disseminated by the Office of the Human Rights Defender on 27 October, citizen Lusine Abrahamyan had visited the Office of the Human Rights Defender on 26 October and informed the Office that her husband Poghos Petrosyan and citizens Robert Hakobyan, Armen Melkonyan, and HakobGalstyan were being held in the Mashtotz Station of the Yerevan City Department of the Police of the Republic of Armenia, where they had been beaten, tortured, and treated in a degrading and humiliating manner. Staff of the Office of the Human Rights Defender visited the Mashtotz Station of the Yerevan City Police and reviewed the Journal of Apprehended Persons and spoke in privacy with citizens Poghos Petrosyan, Robert Hakobyan, Armen Melkonyan, and HakobGalstyan. During the private interviews, Poghos Petrosyan had confirmed having been beaten by the police officers, inflicting injuries upon his head (a wound in the form of a scratch), which the staff of the Office of the Human Rights Defender recorded and photographed. When reviewing the Journal of Apprehended Persons of the Police station, the staff of the Office of the Human Rights Defender found no record of the apprehension of Robert Hakobyan and Armen Melkonyan. As to Poghos Petrosyan and HakobGalstyan, the Journal of Apprehended Persons of the Police station only mentioned that they had been apprehended at 0:15 hours on 26 October 2010 and released at 2:30am on 26 October 2010, but during the visit of the staff, they were still in the police station at around 4 to 6pm on 26 October 2010.

Case 5. In the morning of 14 June 2011, Arman Davtyan, together with his wife S.M. and friend A.M., were apprehended and sent to the MashtotsStation of the Police. They were not allowed to make a phone call. Several persons had beaten them with rubber truncheons and floor tile wood, forcing to write confession testimony. The beating with the floor tile wood broke the fingers on Davtyan’s left hand. Later, he had been electrocuted in different parts of his body, and after four days, on 18 June 2011, he was taken to court in order to have his pre-trial detention ordered as a preventive measure.

Davtyan had been taken to the Yerevan PHAP at 3:15am on 16 June 2011, i.e. two days after his arrest. The medical examination revealed the following bodily injuries: scratches and bruises on the back, and a swelling on the right calf. Arman had been taken out of the PHAP three times for the performance of investigative actions. The first time, he was out of the PHAP for 14 hours and 40 minutes. The second time, he was out for 15 hours and 45 minutes. The third time, he was out for 9 hours and 45 minutes. Investigative actions were performed during the night hours, as well. The night from the 16th to the 17th of June 2011, the eight hours designated for sleep were not secured altogether. On 18 June 2011, A. Davtyan was removed from the PHAP for transfer to the Nubarashen Penitentiary Institution, but he was taken to the Nubarashen Penitentiary Institution only on the next day—the 19th of June. The MashtotsInvestigative Unit and, subsequently, the Special Investigative Service refused to initiate a criminal case. The first instance and criminal appellate courts rejected the appeals, demanding the court to obligate initiation of a criminal case. On 1 November 2012, the Cassation Court of the Republic of Armenia quashed the first instance and criminal appellate court decisions and sent the case back for a new investigation.

Case 6.GevorgKotsinyan served as a common soldier in the military base No 25918, in the second artillery battalion. On February 6, 2011, at around 18:30 he was subjected to physical violence by his comrades-in-arms TaronSuvaryan, Vahe Aghajanyan and Margar Davtyan which resulted in bodily injuries and loss of consciousness. He died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness. According to the forensic examination of the body, GevorgKotsinyan died from reflex cardiac arrest, which was caused by a closed chest injury. The injuries were caused to the living body with blunt objects, and injuries of that nature can result in death or serious damage of the health, and consequently we can conclude that there is direct linkage between these injuries and the death of the person. Moreover, in case of such injuries, the death occurs over very short period of time. Forensic examination of G. Kotsinyan showed that, considering the early signs of corpse decomposition, the death occurred at least 24 hours before the forensic examination. In connection with the case of GevorgKotsinyan charges have brought against regular military servants of the same military unit TaronSuvaryan, Vahe Aghajanyan, Margar Davtyan and officer of the military unit Armen Rafayelyan. On November 14 of 2011, based on the criminal judgment of the court of general jurisdiction of SynikMarz of the Republic of Armenia, regular military servant Margar Davtyan was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 11 years and 6 months, for inaction of power, contributing to the violation of statutory relationship, as well as for causing grave harm to the health of the victim by a group of persons out of hooliganism which has negligently caused the death of the victim. Regular military servants TaronSuvaryan and Vahe Aghajanyan were punished by imprisonment for a term of 11 years for the violation of manual rules of mutual relations between military servants, causing grave consequences, as well as for causing grave harm to the health of the victim out of hooliganism which has negligently caused the death of the victim. Armen Rafayelyan, Officer, Senior Lieutenant of the military unit, was subjected to liability for inaction of power and was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of three years, and was released from serving the punishment by virtue of the Decision of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia “On declaring amnesty on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of declaring independence of the Republic of Armenia”

At present the Court of Appeal of the Republic of Armenia examines the appeal complaints brought by legal successors of the defendants and the victim.

Case 7.VardanSevyan - According to the information provided by the mother of VardanSevyan to media sources, Vardan was right handed, while the bullet hole was found behind his left ear; this fact was used to question the official version, according to which Vardan committed suicide.

Case 8. Tigran Ohanjanyan - The preliminary investigation on this case is still underway. According to the official version, the death of T. Ohanjanyan was the result of electrocution. But this version has been refuted for the second time. The conclusion of the second forensic-electro-technical expert examination has confirmed that “the transition of the voltage from network to antenna was impossible in case of failure or damage of any of the high voltage blocks of the station”. According to the results of the expertise, the sub-block of R-419 radio-electronic device cannot produce a voltage of 180 V, therefore it cannot become the reason for electrocution.

Case 9. Artak Nazaryan - Court examination on the case of Artak Nazaryan, who died in June 2010, started on September 9, 2011. The military servants involved in the criminal case have been charged for leading Artak Nazaryan to suicide. However, the victim’s legal next of kin disagree with this version of the story: They claim that the investigation process was conducted with substantial mistakes and that Artak Nazaryan was actually killed. More specifically, the victim’s side brought forward a motion to carry out an additional forensic examination of Artak Nazaryan’s body to clarify the circumstances and causes of the injuries, specifically skinless surfaces on the right arm, that were qualified by forensic experts as “postmortem injuries”. Based on this circumstance, the victim’s side concluded that the authority in charge of the investigation tries to prevent the formulation of any expert opinion that is different from the official version.

Court examination had been moved from Ijevan office of the court of general jurisdiction of TavushMarz to Yerevan City, since the participants of the proceeding are residents of that city. However, in January 2012, the place of court hearings was moved back to Ijevan. This change coincided with the interrogation of a key witness to this case Arman Mnatsakanyan, who said in the court that Aartak Nazaryan had been beaten and that this happened on July 26 and not July 27 of 2010. The witness also informed the court, that immediately after the occurrence he had been taken to the military police of Berd City, where he was retained for 23 days. The evidence provided in the court by witness Arman Mnatsakanyan, common soldier, contradicts the evidence given by him during the investigation phase. However, after the change of the place of hearings back to TavoushMarz, the witness Arman Mnatsakanyan did not appear in the court, explaining his absence by claiming bad health; according to the doctor’s note Arman Mnatsakanyan suffers from paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia. Thus, the evidences of the investigation phase were published in the absence of this witness. The court examination of this case is underway.

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