{"id":256232,"date":"2014-07-18T19:12:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T15:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=256232"},"modified":"2014-07-18T19:13:24","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T15:13:24","slug":"police-officer-provoked-me-calling-me-turkish-agent-political-activist-on-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2014\/07\/18\/police-officer-provoked-me-calling-me-turkish-agent-political-activist-on-trial.html","title":{"rendered":"Police Officer Provoked Me, Calling Me &#8216;Turkish Agent&#8217;: Political Activist on Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">The defense in the case of political activist Shant Harutyunyan and his friends said in court today that the testimony of police officer Gegham Khachatryan (named as a victim in this case) in court and the one he gave when questioned by police during the preliminary investigation contradict each other.&nbsp;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tTigran Petrosyan&#39;s attorney Ara Zakaryan read in court the victim&#39;s testimony given to police. According to Zakaryan, though the officer claims he beckoned Harutyunyan and urged him not to cross the street, video footage shows that the victim didn&#39;t try to speak with Harutyunyan, but approached him from behind and grabbed him by his neck.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn response, Khachatryan said it&#39;s just that his voice is not heard in the video. Addressing Khachatryan, Harutyunyan asked why did he whisper in his ear that he (Harutyunyan) is an agent of Turkey.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHarutyunyan asked whether Khachatryan was trying to provoke him or fulfilling a specific order. The police officer denied that he said such a thing.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPresent in court today were Tigran Arakelyan, who was previously imprisoned on political grounds, and Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian. Present at yesterday&#39;s court session was Armenian National Congress MP, former prisoner of conscience Nikol Pashinyan.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRecall, Harutyunyan and several of his supporters were arrested on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2013\/11\/05\/clashes-in-central-yerevan-dozens-detained.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>November 5, 2013<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, at the start of an anti-government march, and criminal proceedings were launched against them. They were charged under RA Criminal Code Article 316 Section 2 (&quot;violence against a representative of the authorities that is dangerous for life or health&quot;) and Article 185 Section 2 Paragraph 1 (&quot;willful destruction or spoilage of somebody&rsquo;s property, which caused significant damage, committed by arson, explosion or other publicly dangerous method&quot;). However, the initial charge was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2014\/03\/31\/charge-against-political-activist-shant-harutyunyan-changed.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000CD;\"><strong>removed and replaced with<\/strong><\/span><\/a> RA Criminal Code Article 258 Section 4 (&quot;hooliganism committed with a weapon or another item used as a weapon&quot;).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAccording to the case materials, the defendants on November 5 attacked police officers. The defendants don&#39;t admit to the charges. They claim that they were acting in self-defense: they hit back at men who attacked them, interfered with their protest, and were in civilian clothes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The defense in the case of political activist Shant Harutyunyan and his friends said in court today that the testimony of police officer Gegham Khachatryan&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[56899,51376],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}