Epress.am News from Armenia
On December 1, the Court of Criminal Appeals decided to maintain the Court of First Instance’s verdict in the case of Hayk Movsisyan, a soldier who was found dead in a NKR detention facility. Movsisyan’s mother, Heghine Petrosyan, through her representatives, Artur Sakunts and Arayik Zalyan, demanded that the court consider the SIS’s decision to dismiss the case of Movsisyan’s death as illegal, as well as recognize her as his next of kin, however the demand was rejected at the Court of General Jurisdiction of Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Districts.
The Court of Appeals continually delayed the discussion of the appeal, because the prosecutor refused to release the evidence forming the basis of the dismissal.
In the Court of First Instance, the claimant demanded that the investigator present all materials related to the case, however Judge Mnatsakan Martirosyan did not obligate the investigator to do so and handed a verdict without reading all the case materials. The Court of Appeals, presided by Judge Manushak Petrosyan, did not agree with the decision of the Court of First Instance and demanded that all case related materials be presented, however the materials were not given to the court.
The Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor office notes that yesterday the prosecutor had sent a note to the court saying that the necessary materials are already available for the lawsuit. Meanwhile, the court stated that they consider the trial to be concluded and passed to the phase of consulting additional evidence.
Arayik Zalyan, the representative of Movsisyan’s mother, once again motioned to obtain the materials of the case dismissed at the Special Investigation Service (SIS). The court, however, stated that it already undertook all possible and required means to obtain the latter material. Additionally, the judge noted that the materials presented to the Court of First Instance were sufficient for making a virdict. Zalyan further pressed the motion, noting that otherwise there would be a violation of the criminal judicial code article 290 section 4, because the provision mentions that the bodies conducting the procedures are obliged to present all the materials of the case to the court. However, the judge retired to the deliberation room and denied the motion.
In the previous sessions, Arayik Zalyan noted that having all the dismissed case’s materials is important because officials have been interrogated during the preliminary investigation. In particular, 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 decisions from neither the trial, nor the preliminary investigation results contain such information, that there are obligations between the states regarding Armenian citizens, condemned by Armenian court orders, being kept in NKR prisons. However, we can register the factor that if a healthy individual was arrested by the police and subsequently died, then the state (Republic of Armenia) is obliged to present convincing reasons behind the incidents that led to the individual's death,” was said during the appeals suit.
According to the official stance, Movsisyan committed suicide in his cell at the Shushi detention facility. The young man’s mother stated that she does not believe the suicide explanation.
Movsisyan’s mother’s representatives also stress that the preliminary investigation and the judicial bodies have not undertaken all means to discover the crime. It is especially unclear, for example, if in fact the decision by the authorized bodies to send Hayk Movsisyan to Nagorno Karakh was legal, and if it was possible for Hayk Movsisyan to hang himself with his bed sheets from the window bars in 6-7 minutes and if medical intervention would have saved Movsisyan's life.