Citizens of Armenia who go through various criminal cases often do not have means to pay the bail set by the court and remain in custody. This is what happened to Tigran Karapetyan, a 28-year-old resident of Yerevan. He went shopping on the night of March 30 when he was approached by officers from the Malatya police department, who, swearing and using violence, arrested him for speaking boldly to them.
On March 29, bail was imposed on him as a precautionary measure. But Karapetyan has not been able to collect the required amount (1 million 900 thousand drams, equal to about $4,000) for bail for about a month.
The family with many children lives in harsh conditions. 1 million 900 thousand drams were too much for the Karapetyans. The family somehow managed to collect it, and on May 1, Tigran Karapetyan was released from custody. In fact, he had to spend a month in prison. Gurgen Hovhannisyan, Tigran Karapetyan’s lawyer, informed us.
“Tigran’s father’s friends helped him raise the money. Tigran’s father, Vardan Harutyunyan, has a long military history. He is a participant of the Karabakh war, one of the freedom fighters of the Aramo detachment, and took part in the April war as well: he was one of the defenders of our homeland,” the lawyer said.
However, the prosecutor’s office is not interested in the condition of the family: who Tigran’s father is, or even the state of emergency, in which the courts often refuse to apply detention as precautionary measure.
The prosecutor’s office demands that Tigran Harutyunyan remain in custody and has appealed the court’s decision to use bail.
Recently, a forensic report on Tigran Harutyunyan’s injuries was received. “It concludes that Tigran received injuries of moderate severity, which could not be caused by a fall, as written by the police. He has a sprain, a broken cheekbone, serious traumas, and a full examination would not rule out even worse damages. How a person in such condition can be punished? After all, detention is equated to punishment here,” says Gurgen Hovhannisyan.
He says that the medical examination was carried out not fastidiously. “I have participated in some examinations; I have argued with doctors. They did not perform the examination properly. When a required specialist was not present, they said, come tomorrow, come the next day, and so on. If it is the police, or the investigator, who needs the examination, they conduct it much more thoroughly, but when it concerns to a person who was beaten and tortured by the police like a dog, they start slowing down and creating a ‘loyal’ situation.”
The lawyer requested that Tigran undergo additional examination.
Police wrote that Tigran was turning-rotating his head to the right and left and hitting it to the walls.
Mushegh Karapetyan, a relative of the victim, told Forrights.am that the torture case “does not move forward” at the special investigation service. Tigran was recognized as a victim in this case, he testified, but there is no suspect.
Syuzan Simonyan