Case Into Alleged Domestic Violence Won’t Be Reopened, Court Rules

Yerevan’s Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun district court, presided over by judge Arsen Nikoghosyan, ruled on Tuesday that the investigation into an alleged domestic violence case should not be reopened. The complaint had been filed by Yerevan woman Naira Smbatyan, who insisted that on January 4, 2017, she had been subjected to physical abuse in front of her 4 children by her husband Ara Khachatryan. After the beating, the woman filed a report with the Arabkir police department, where investigators soon launched a criminal case into an alleged domestic abuse and confirmed that the bruises on the woman’s body were in fact marks of beating. Subsequently, however, the head investigator decided to terminate the case on the grounds that it was unknown who had beaten Smbatyan.

The Tuesday hearing was held behind closed doors as per Ara Khachatryan’s request. The husband, however, did not even wait for the announcement of the verdict and left the courtroom after the judge went to the contemplation room to decide on a verdict. Speaking to an Epress.am reporter after the hearing, Smbatyan’s lawyer, Stepan Voskanyan, insisted that the investigation conducted by the police and the court ruling was biased.

During the hearing, our reporter requested that the judge allow her to film the proceedings. Nikoghosyan, however, not only denied the reporter’s request but also granted Ara Khachatryan’s motion for holding a closed hearing. According to the husband, an open hearing could “potentially harm my children.”

“My kids’ classmates saw the videos from the previous hearing,” he said. Despite Smbatyan’s lawyer’s argument that the criminal case concerned the beating of a woman and had nothing to do with the children, the judge remained included to hold the hearing without the presence of reporters.

After the issuance of the verdict, lawyer Voskanyan told our reporter that the investigative body had not conducted a proper and complete investigation and had based its decision to terminate the case solely on the husband’s testimony. “The investigation did not reveal any factual evidence that the beating was committed by a third person. The only correct decision would have been to involve the woman’s husband as a suspect,” the lawyer stressed, adding that he intended to challenge the verdict at the Court of Appeal.