Epress.am News from Armenia
Mkhitar Sargsyan, a Nubarashen inmate who was found hanged in the prison showers on March 1, was to be set free in two days. The 35-year-old prisoner was one of civic activist Vardges Gaspari's cellmates during the activist's week-long stay in jail, and following his release from Nubarashen, Gaspari announced in a conversation with reporters that Sargsyan had not committed suicide but had actually been murdered for not torturing him “assiduously enough.”
Speaking to Epress.am, Sargsyan's widow, Satenik Hovsepyan, claimed that her husband had had nothing to do with the ill-treatment and torture Gaspari had been subjected to in jail, and “was killed because he refused to take the blame for it.”
“[My husband] had no reason to kill himself; I still don’t believe it. I guess [prison authorities] told him to say he had beaten Gaspari. He'd say to me he was not going to take the blame for something he didn't do, so maybe they pressured him, beat him for refusing to do as he was told. A person who's in prison for only a week wouldn't have committed suicide” Hovsepyan insisted.
Sargsyan, as told by his widow, had been sentenced to a three-month jail term for slapping a 12-year-old kid “a couple of times” during a dispute in their yard. Taking into account the 57 days the defendant had spent in pre-trial custody, the court issued a final sentence of 1 month and 3 days which came into force on February 1.
“I spoke to him just few hours before [his death]. He was in a really good mood; he asked if the kids had eaten and then said to take care of ourselves until he comes back. They say he went to the showers in the evening where he was subsequently found hanged. I don't believe it,” Hovsepyan said.
The woman added that her husband had told her he was being interrogated every day “in connection with the Gaspari case.” “He'd say to me, 'It's horrible; they say I'll face charges if I beat Gaspari. But I didn't lay a finger on him.' He though that this way [prison officials] maybe wanted to extend his term.”
The woman also claimed that her husband had good relationships with fellow inmates: “They are not bad guys, he'd say. He told me that there was a man [Gaspari] he had seen on the internet before and that he was on a hunger strike, and I asked whether people actually did such things – refused to eat food. He replied that yes, they did when facing hardship.”
The prisoner's financially unprovided family have taken an AMD 500 thousand (about $1000) loan to be able to arrange his funeral, and despite the fact that the case has already been closed and Sargsyan's death ruled a suicide, his widow insists she intends to fight “to the last.”
“I gave a perfectly healthy husband to the state and received his corpse back a week later. I'll go to court. It's not like no one was unaffected by his death; he had two underage children and a mother under his care,” Hovsepyan said.