Epress.am News from Armenia
Hrachya Boyajyan, of the ten Sari Tagh men accused of committing violence against police officers last July, has been transferred to the Nubarashen prison infirmary on the eleventh day of his open-ended hunger strike, the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor Office (HCAV) reported on Saturday.
According to Boyajyan’s lawyer, Arayik Zalyan, prior to the transfer, his client was being held in one of the ground floor cells, whose notoriously poor conditions have been repeatedly addressed by the group of public observers conducting public monitoring of penitentiary institutions in Armenia.
The prisoner, Zalyan said, does not intend to stop his hunger strike and demands a meeting with representatives of the General Prosecutor’s office. In addition, Boyajyan, along with the rest of the arrestees, continue to demand that they either be released or the charges against them be specified.
In an earlier conversation with Epress.am, Boyajyan’s wife had said her husband was suffering from serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, and expressed her concern that the hunger strike could exacerbate his issues.
Recall, the ten Sari Tagh men allegedly committed violence against police officers during the clashes that occurred in the neighborhood on July 19, the second day of the stand-off in the nearby police headquarters in Yerevan’s Erebuni district; if convicted, they could face up to 10 years in prison. The accused, however, insist that on the day of the clashes they had gone out to find out the causes of the power and water outages in their neighborhood and that their actions were not targeted against law enforcement officers. Incidentally, none of the allegedly affected police officers has identified any of the accused. Moreover, they have acknowledged in their testimonies that the Sari Tagh men had in fact taken to the street because of their household problems.