Epress.am News from Armenia
The Arabkir and Qanaker-Zeytun district court in Yerevan rejected on June 12 the petition for the exhumation of the corpse of soldier Manuchar Manucharyan. Recall, Manucharyan was drafted to the army in the summer of 2012 from the Vanadzor military commissariat. He died on July 31, 2013, as a result of three gunshot wounds. A criminal case was initiated under RA Criminal Code Article 110 Part 1 (inciting suicide); two people, fellow soldiers Arman Stepanyan and Babken Gaboyan, have been charged with driving Manuchar Manucharyan to commit suicide. However, the aggrieved party claims that it was a premeditated murder.
In addition, the court refused to re-send the soldier’s trousers to forensic-traceological examination, a request for which had been filed by Ruben Martirosyan, a representative of Manucharyan’s legal successor and an expert criminologist with the Peaceful Dialogue NGO expert.
Speaking to Epress.am on Friday, Martirosyan said that during one of the court hearings he had demanded that the court once again examine the material evidence, pointing out that a 5 mm diameter hole caused by a bullet was present on the right leg of Manucharyan’s trousers. When asked by Martirosyan why he had not mentioned this fact in his conclusion, forensic expert G. Avetisyan replied that he had not examined these trousers.
Despite this obvious discrepancy, however, both the court and the Office of Armenia’s General Prosecutor have refused to subject the trousers to a second forensic examination. Instead, judge Mkrtchyan assured during the June 12 hearing that he would look into the discrepancy in the advisory room, which, according to Ruben Martirosyan, “does not really mean anything because the judge is not a tracologist.”
The bullet hole on Manucharyan’s trousers, the expert added, definitely testifies that his death was a premeditated murder, since Manucharyan would have been unable to commit suicide while shooting himself in the back of his leg, as well as in the jaw with an automatic rifle.
Back in 2013, Ruben Martirosyan insisted that Manucharyan had actually been murdered and the suicide story was cooked up by the investigative body. Martirosyan had said that the weapon with which Manucharyan had allegedly killed himself had no fingerprints on it. In a Monday conversation with Epress.am, the expert stood by his convictions, stressing that over the years he had obtained even more supporting evidence.
On April 23, 2016, Martirosyan filed a crime report with Armenia’s then-General Prosecutor Gevorg Kostanyan, according to which, “as a result of a unilateral preliminary investigation, which was conducted in gross violation of the Criminal Procedure Code, a premeditated murder has been classified as suicide.”
According to the official report, Manucharyan was found with three gunshot wounds through his chin while on guard duty. However, Martirosyan noted that a subsequent examination of the soldier’s uniform had found a 5mm hole in the back of the right pant leg that had burn traces on its edges. The criminologist is therefore convinced that the damage discovered on Manucharyan’s trousers is a characteristic of a gunshot.
“The preliminary investigation body considered it proven that Manucharyan had committed suicide through three self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head; however, this fourth wound, which Manucharyan couldn’t have inflicted on himself, proves that he was deliberately killed, and that forensic experts A. Hambardzumyan and G. Avetisyan committed a crime which provides for punishment under Article 338 of Armenia’s Criminal Code (perjury or false expert conclusions),” Martirosyan said in his appeal to Kostanyan.