Epress.am News from Armenia
Four persons in civilian clothes went to Civilnet.am reporter Arpi Makhsudyan’s house on Thursday morning and wanted to search the property without a warrant and without the reporter’s consent. The visitors, who identified themselves as police officers, told Makhsudyan that they had been informed by sources in Moscow that the journalist was hiding a criminal at her house. Speaking to Epress.am, Makhsudyan said the visitors kept talking to her in a rude or disrespectful manner during the entire conversation.
“They came knocking on our door at 7:30 in the morning. My father-in-law opened the hour and then I heard him say in a panicked voice ‘do not come inside!’ I went up to them and I asked what they wanted and they replied that they did not owe me any explanation. I told them that of course they did, they had come to my home after all. I demanded that they show me their police identifications and one of them replied that they had already showed them and shouldn’t have to do so one more time. Then one of them took out his identifications and showed it to me from afar,” Makhsudyan told our reporter, adding that the 4 four men claimed that they had information that “a person who has committed a serious crime” was hiding at the reporter’s apartment.
When asked by the reporter whether they had a warrant to search her house, the men replied that they did not one when it came to grave crimes. “I told them that they could not search my house without a warrant, and they replied that I did not have enough legal awareness to expalin them what they could and could not do,” the reporter said. She added that the visitors then threatened to arrest her and her father-in-law because they were “obstructing our work.”
When Makhsudyan warned the men that she would call her lawyer, they “suddenly changed their tactics” and insisted that “we only need your help.”
“I asked them what they needed my help for and they replied that they had been informed from Moscow that the criminal they were searching for had connected to my home wi-fi. Then they announced that they had come to find out whether the criminal had any family relation to us and showed us a photo to see if we recognized the man. It was a photo saved from Odnoklassniki.ru – of a young man in glasses standing in Tsitsernakaber. I told them that I did not know this person and demanded that they leave my house. One of them replies, ‘Don’t tell us what to do! We are the tellers here and you – the obeyer.’ They he turned to the man next to him and said, ‘What do you think, should we take her to the station?’ I told him that he would have serious problems if he dared to lay a finger on me.”
According to Makhsudyan, then men left soon after this conversation, promising, however, to return with a warrant. The journalist told Epress.am she could not say with certainty whether the morning visit was somehow connected with her professional activities but that she could not rule it out entirely either.