{"id":268080,"date":"2015-09-29T16:07:29","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T12:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=268080"},"modified":"2015-09-29T18:42:27","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T14:42:27","slug":"defendants-plead-not-guilty-to-veterans-beating-victims-relatives-motion-for-prosecutors-recusal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2015\/09\/29\/defendants-plead-not-guilty-to-veterans-beating-victims-relatives-motion-for-prosecutors-recusal.html","title":{"rendered":"Defendants Plead Not Guilty to Veteran&#8217;s Beating; Victim&#8217;s Relatives Motion for Prosecutor&#8217;s Recusal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2015\/08\/25\/defendants-do-not-show-up-for-trial-in-karabakh-war-veteran%E2%80%99s-murder-case.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Defendants<\/span><\/a> in the case involving the beating of Karabakh War veteran Vardan Tumanyan pleaded not guilty to the charges against them on Tuesday, September 29. Co-defendant Ghukasyan admitted in court that he had hit Tumanyan; however, Ghukasyan stated, he had done it &ldquo;only once.&rdquo;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRecall, Tumanyan, 55, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2015\/04\/09\/suspects-in-the-beating-of-war-veteran-released-from-prison.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">died in July 2014<\/span><\/a>, one day after being brutally beaten in a Yerevan yard. Gevorg Sargsyan, known by the nickname &quot;Jungle&quot;, and his two nephews, Sargis Ghukasyan and Viktor Hovsepyan, were subsequently arrested on charges of infliction of willful medium-gravity damage to health by a group of persons.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tTanya Melkumyan, the victim&#39;s widow and his legal successor, does not agree with the public prosecutor&#39;s indictment. During the hearing Tuesday afternoon her attorney Tigran Muradyan filed a motion for recusal of prosecutor Yuri Aghayan; he reminded, that at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/en\/2015\/09\/23\/defense-attorney-alleges-armenian-veteran-died-of-abrasions-unrelated-to-his-brutal-beating.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">the previous hearing<\/span><\/a> the prosecutor stated there were no contradictions between the two forensic medical examinations and that they only supplemented each other.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;This statement is obviously groundless since according to the first examination Tumanyan&#39;s death was directly related to the beating, while the second one showed he died because of a birth defect. The prosecutor&#39;s statement proves his subjectivity. It proves that the prosecutor has taken upon himself to defend the accused,&rdquo; Muradyan said.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tJudge Davit Harutyunyan denied the motion of recusal. The judge also rejected the motion filed by co-defendant Viktor Hovsepyan&#39;s attorney, Karen Mkrtchyan, for his client&#39;s acquittal. At the previous hearing on September 23 the attorney had stated Hovsepyan &ldquo;was only trying to separate those fighting.&rdquo; Judge Harutyunyan, however, stated on Tuesday that at this stage it is impossible to make claims about the innocence of one of the accused.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn an earlier interview the veteran&#39;s widow had told Epress.am that the defendants had beaten Vardan Tumanyan right in front of her and her daughter. Tumanyan&#39;s relatives claim co-defendant Sargsyan &ldquo;has spent a lot of money to obtain the results of the second examination;&rdquo; meanwhile, they are confident about the reliability of the first one.<\/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>Tanya Melkumyan, the victim&#8217;s widow and his legal successor, does not agree with the public prosecutor&#8217;s indictment. During the hearing Tuesday afternoon her attorney Tigran Muradyan filed a motion for recusal of prosecutor&#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":268077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[56930,60733,60734,60735,56927,59187],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268080"}],"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=268080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}