Epress.am News from Armenia
The Appeals Court in Yerevan today upheld a lower court ruling that the murder of Yerevan woman Heghine Darbazyan at the hands of her former husband had not been carried out with particular cruelty.
On August 23, 39-year-old Artak Arakelyan was found guilty by a Malatia-Sebastia district court judge of the murder of his former wife whom he stabbed more than 30 times in broad daylight at her workplace. Arakelyan was sentenced to 11.5 years in prison, which Seda Safaryan, the lawyer for the victim's sister and legal successor Kristine Darbazyan, went ahead and appealed against, insisting that Arakelyan should instead be convicted of a murder with extreme cruelty, which provides for 12-20 years’ or life imprisonment.
“There’s even witness testimony which indicates that the woman was killed in a particularly cruel way. According to one of the eyewitnesses, Arakelyan had pinned the woman to the floor and ‘was just doing his job sitting atop her.’ This constitutes extreme cruelty and should have been considered as such by the courts,” Safaryan told Epress.am after the Tuesday hearing, adding that she intended to take the case to the Cassation Court.