Epress.am News from Armenia
Armenia’s justice system, the General Prosecutor’s Office and some of the lawyers involved in the case of the murder of the Avetisyan family in Gyumri are directly responsible for the fact the crime has yet to be solved, human rights defender Arthur Sakunts, the head of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly Vanadzor office, stated in conversation with Epress.am. Sakunts himself used to represent Araksya Avetisyan’s legal successor Andranik Poghosyan in court proceedings.
Recall, six members of the Avetisyan family, including a 2-year-old girl, were shot to death on January 12, 2015, in their Gyumri home. The family’s seventh member, 6-month-old Seryozha Avetisyan, was hospitalized with serious stab wounds and died 7 days later. Valery Permyakov, a conscript of the 102nd Russian military base in Armenia’s second largest city, was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison in August, 2016. Sakunts, nonetheless, had insisted all along that the crime itself had not been fully revealed and that he was not convinced that Permyakov was the sole culprit.
In his interview, which you can watch below, the prominent human rights defender takes his claim a step further, alleging that Permyakov was not in the Avetisyans’ house on the day of the murder at all. “I assure you, if officials had carried out an examination in the house, Permyakov would not have been able to say how he had gotten there or how he had moved between the rooms because he was never there in the first place.”