Armenia’s Special Investigation Service, General Prosecutor Don’t Want to Uncover Real Cause of Soldier’s Death: Statement

Representatives of the RA Special Investigation Service (SIS) and the RA Prosecutor General's Office did not appear in the RA Criminal Court of Appeal on June 17 for consideration of the appeal presented by Artur Sakunts (pictured, right) and Arayik Zalyan, the representatives of Heghine Petrosyan (pictured, left), the mother of  military conscript Hayk Movsisyan, who died in a Karabakh prison cell.

Petrosyan's representatives are asking for Hayk Movsisyan to be recognized as a victim and Heghine Petrosyan as the victim's legal successor, and to oblige SIS investigator M. Babayan to provide the decision to quash criminal proceedings, as well as copies of the case material.

As reported [AM] by the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly (HCA) – Vanadzor Office, representatives of the SIS and the General Prosecutor's office informed the court in writing that they will not be present because they are burdened with work. 

Arayik Zalyan said representatives of these state institutions also failed to appear in court when the case was examined by the court of first instance. Moreover, the applicant's representatives petitioned for the participation of the SIS and General Prosecutor's office representatives, but to no avail. The court attempted to find out whether Heghine Petrosyan's representative doesn't consider it necessary to ensure also the presence of the other party at the appeal, to which Zalyan responded in the affirmative. Thus, consideration of the appeal was postponed to June 30 at 2:30 pm. 
 
The HCA Vanadzor Office in its statement claimed that representatives of the SIS and RA General Prosecutor's Office wish to prevent disclosure of the real circumstances and causes of Hayk Movsisyan's death by prolonging the process, thereby eliminating the "fresh traces" of the crime. 

On November 20, 2012, a court found rank-and-file soldier Hayk Movsisyan guilty of evading military service "through maiming, feigned disease, forgery of documents or other fraud" and sentenced him to 3 years in prison. One week later, he was found dead in a detention facility in Karabakh. 

The prosecutor's office in Nagorno-Karabakh launched a criminal case on grounds of incitement to suicide, which, however, was closed due to absence of corpus delicti in the actions of the penitentiary administration, prisoners in the detention facility, defendants, and convicts. In order to get a legal assessment of the actions of officials in the criminal case, it was sent to the RA Special Investigation Service on grounds of negligence, where criminal proceedings were instigated. However, Hayk Movsisyan was not recognized as a victim; thus, the victim and his legal successor were not given the opportunity to realize their rights enshrined in the Criminal Procedure Code.

Hayk's mother, speaking to the press earlier, said she doesn't believe that her son committed suicide.