Epress.am News from Armenia
Hovhannes Harutyunyan, a member of the Sasna Tsrer (Daredevils of Sasun) armed group who was hospitalized with a gunshot leg injury after a shoot-out with police on July 26, a week into the seige of the police headquarters in Yerevan’s Erebuni district, was transferred on December 30 from the Convicts’ Hospital back to the Nubarashen prison despite continuing to be in a grave condition, Harutyunyan’s lawyer, Hayarpi Sargsyan, told Epress.am on Tuesday.
“Hovhannes is still not being provided with proper medical treatment. On several occasions when I visited him, he had severe pain in his leg and I asked for a doctor to inject him with painkillers. But they would either not send a doctor at all or send an inexperienced one from the psychiatric unit who would say it was his first time administering an IV drip,” Sargsyan said.
According to the lawyer, Harutyunyan was transferred to the prison suddenly, with no warning whatsoever; “I was going to visit him on December 30 at the Convicts’ Hospital when the warden informed me that my client had been transferred. He did not even tell me where Hovhannes had been taken to.”
Sargsyan, who believes the transfer to be “extremely suspicious” and has sent an appeal letter to the European Court of Human Right asking for intervention and assistance in transferring Harutyunyan to a civilian hospital, said that officials justified their decision by claiming that Harutyunyan did not require a hospital stay. “It’s as if they are deliberately denying him treatment. How can they say Hovhannes does not need hospitalization when he has not even been seen by any doctor?”