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CoE HR Commissioner Doesn’t Know Yet If Shant Harutyunyan is a Political Prisoner or Not (VIDEO)

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, did not know about the Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan personally hitting Shant Harutyunyan, who was arrested on November 5, 2013, Muižnieks told this to journalists yesterday during a press conference in Yerevan. He mentioned that during his brief meeting with the Police Chief, he mostly spoke about domestic violence toward women, and how the police deal with the issue.

“But the case you mentioned, and others similar to it, consideration and analysis of it can be incorporated into our report,” said the CoE Human Rights Commissioner.

While answering the question to the issue of Shant Harutyunyan being a political prisoner, Nils Muižnieks stated that the term “political prisoner" is used by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, while he as the CoE Human Rights Commissioner, uses the term “selective or politicized justice.”

“But I have very frequently examined issues of selective or politicized justice, and the targets of such justice. I’m not in the position right now to say whether these individuals you mentioned are, or are not victims of selective or politicized justice. But one of the reasons we decided to look into the administerial justice, is because we saw certain risk factors for the independence of judges and for their accountability,” said the commissioner.

The Commissioner spoke of a letter handed to him from the families of Shant Harutyunyan and other defendants, which raised the issue of juvenile Shahen Harutyunyan, who is under threat of 5 years imprisonment demanded by the prosecutor. According to the CoE Commissioner, he raised the issue during his meetings with high-level officials and stressed that juveniles must be treated differently than adults and that they should not receive similar punishments, because “for a 14-15 year old, 5 years can feel like a lifetime.”

Journalists asked if Muižnieks had met with the President Serzh Sargsyan and raised the issue of violations of the presumption of innocence, especially because Sargsyan had claimed that Shant Harutyunyan was a “criminal” when he gave a speech at Columbia University, New York.

According to Muižnieks, he did not discuss those issues with the President; however, he suggested that his Yerevan team should study incidents of officials violating the presumption of innocence. He believes those violations can also be incorporated in a report related to Armenia, which would be published in 2 months.