Armenia’s government will on Friday take a decision on whether to transfer 50 thousand euros the family of an Armenian soldier who died in 2002 whilst in military service. Recall, in November last year, the European Court of Human Rights issued a verdict in favor of Suren Muradyan’s father, Hrachya Muradyan, ruling that the Armenian authorities had not taken appropriate steps to protect conscript Muradyan\u2019s life while he was in their care and had subsequently failed to carry out an effective investigation into the circumstances of the soldier\u2019s death. The Court therefore obliged Armenia to pay the soldier\u2019s family 50,000 euros in respect of non-pecuniary damage.<\/p>\n
Hrachik Muradyan, a native of the village of Baghramyan, had filed an appeal with the ECHR, claiming that his son had died as a result of ill-treatment by his superiors while in the army and their failure to provide him with proper and timely medical help. The applicant also accused Armenian authorities of failing to protect his son\u2019s life while he had been under their care as a military conscript.<\/p>\n
According to the application, the soldier had sustained a fatal injury to his spleen as a result of multiple episodes of ill-treatment by higher ranking military officers at his unit. The authorities, however, did not investigate these circumstances; moreover, they did everything to cover up the case, suggesting that the soldier had sustained his injuries as a result of an \u201caccidental light blow\u201d and putting forward a fake diagnosis of malaria as a factor to the death.<\/p>\n
\u201c[\u2026] Suren Muradyan died as a result of an injury to his spleen which initially resulted in its sub-capsular rupture and later in a full rupture and acute bleeding. It appears that medical negligence may also have contributed to his death. As regards the fatal injury, the authorities carried out an official investigation into this fact and concluded that it had been sustained on 21 July 2002 when officer V.G., during a public argument with Suren Muradyan, briskly shook his hand, as a result of which their hands \u2013 apparently accidentally \u2013 hit or touched the left side of Suren Muradyan\u2019s abdomen and caused the sub-capsular rupture of the spleen. The Court, however, has doubts about this explanation of Suren Muradyan\u2019s fatal injury in view of a number of serious flaws in the conduct of the investigation that led to those conclusions,\u201d the ruling had said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[\u2026] The investigating authority, having interviewed a number of witnesses, obtained evidence suggesting that Suren Muradyan had had a conflict with two officers of the same military unit, V.G. and D.H. The conflict had started with an argument on 21 July 2002 because of an allegedly stolen watch and Suren Muradyan had been given a deadline to comply with certain demands and had allegedly been threatened that he \u201cwould get into trouble\u201d and \u201cwould be punished\u201d if he failed to do so. Furthermore, a few days later, apparently when the deadline expired, he was taken by those officers on several occasions to the headquarters, including officer K.Z.\u2019s office, where the threats allegedly continued. This also appears to be the period when Suren Muradyan started to feel unwell. Despite all this evidence which pointed to possible wrongdoing on the part of officers D.H., V.G. and K.Z., they were not immediately isolated and were not questioned until two, three and ten days later respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201c[\u2026]The investigating authority, while having eyewitness evidence suggesting that there had been no obvious acts of physical abuse in respect of Suren Muradyan during the argument of 21 July 2002, nevertheless chose to focus its attention primarily on that argument without making any serious attempts to clarify the circumstances of Suren Muradyan\u2019s subsequent visits to the headquarters. No detailed questions were posed to the officers in an attempt to inquire about any possible ill-treatment to which Suren Muradyan might have been subjected during those visits. The denial of any ill-treatment on their part was readily accepted without further inquiries,\u201d the Court had observed, noting that authorities did not actively pursue the ill-treatment hypothesis, even after obtaining evidence suggesting that at least two of the three implicated officers, namely D.H. and K.Z., had been involved in episodes of violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hrachik Muradyan, a native of the village of Baghramyan, had filed an appeal with the ECHR, claiming that his son had died as a result of ill-treatment by his superiors while in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[14440,58459,58460],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280376"}],"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=280376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}