Epress.am News from Armenia
Hrachya Boyajyan, one of the ten Sari Tagh men accused of committing violence against police officers last July, has ended his 16-day hunger strike, his wife, Narine Ghazaryan, told Epress.am on Wednesday.
According to Ghazaryan, a prolonged hunger strike could have had detrimental consequences on Boyajyan’s health since “the past days he was just barely keeping conscious.”
“We begged him to end the strike because the hunger strike, couple with his existing health issues, would have had severe consequences for hims,” the woman said, stressing that none of the strike’s demands – specification of the charges against him, a meeting with a representatives of the General Prosecutor’s office – have been met by the authorities.
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.