{"id":281011,"date":"2017-06-07T16:51:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T12:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am\/?p=281011"},"modified":"2017-06-07T16:51:19","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T12:51:19","slug":"yerevan-family-axing-witness-contradicts-himself-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2017\/06\/07\/yerevan-family-axing-witness-contradicts-himself-in-court.html","title":{"rendered":"Yerevan Family Axing Witness Contradicts Himself in Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yerevan\u2019s Shengavit district court yesterday held another hearing on the Mansuryans\u2019 family axing case. The family\u2019s neighbors, spouses Lilit Harutyunyan and Samvel Grigoryan, were invited to testify as witnesses on Tuesday as they were the first to come to the Mansuryan\u2019s aid on the day of the attack.<\/p>\n

Recall, on July 8, 2016, Vladik Martirosyan attacked his former wife Taguhi Mansuryan and her parents, axing his former mother-in-law to death and leaving Mansuryan and her father severely injured. In his pre-trial testimony, however, the defendant claimed<\/a><\/span><\/strong> that his actions had not been premeditated and that he had \u201conly taken away the axe from Vachagan Mansuryan in self-defense.\u201d Meanwhile, speaking to reporters after the tragic incident, Taguhi Mansuryan had said her former spouse had repeatedly threatened her and her family in the past, and the attack therefore \u201cwas not a big surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

When questioning the witnesses yesterday, the defendant\u2019s lawyer, Liana Gasparyan, tried mainly to determine who the axe belonged to and whether the neighbors had previously seen an axe at the Mansuryan\u2019s house. The lawyer also asked whether the witnesses had previously seen Martirosyan carrying an axe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to our reporter after the hearing, human rights defender Eduard Danielyan said the lawyer\u2019s last question was \u201cridiculous and illogical\u201d since \u201cpeople don\u2019t normally walk around with an axe in their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the witnesses told the court they had previously seen an axe neither in Vladik\u2019s hands nor at the Mansuryan\u2019s house. The spouses also insisted they were never particularly close to the Mansuryans and knew nothing more about them than about the former son-in-law.<\/p>\n

The defendant, in turn, asked the witnesses to describe his character and whether they thought he was capable of the actions he is being accused of. \u201cTo tell the truth, I never thought it would get to this. But it did, so I don\u2019t know. As far as I knew, you were normal,\u201d witness Grigoryan replied.<\/p>\n

Grigoryan\u2019s further statements were significantly different from his pre-trial testimony, in which he had said Mansuryan would have killed the Mansuryan\u2019s had he not come to their rescue in time. The witness had previously cited Martirosyan as saying \u201cI\u2019ll end you all\u201d and \u201cLet go of me! I have to kill them all!\u201d as he had tried to remove Martirosyan from the area. Yesterday, meanwhile, Grigoryan insisted he did not recall the defendant shouting these threats.<\/p>\n

The police officers who had arrived at the scene on the day of the incident, Norayr Abrahamyan and Davit Panoyan, also testified on Tuesday. On the day of the axing, Martirosyan had once again gone to Mansuryan\u2019s house in order to \u201cresolve the issues over the child visitations.\u201d The former spouses had begun quarreling again, and both sides subsequently called the police, accusing eachother of physical violence. Martirosyan also called an ambulance, claiming that he had begun feeling unwell during the argument; he then refused to go to the police station for questioning, saying to Abrahamyan and Panoyan that he was waiting for his ambulance and would go to the station in the morning.<\/p>\n

When asked by the court why they hadn\u2019t insisted on taking Martirosyan to the police station, the officers replied that the defendant \u201cwas not aggressive and did not look dangerous, so we didn\u2019t think there was anything to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shows yet again that our law enforcement officers do not care about the people\u2019s right to life. A person can never feel protected here because police can let a potential murderer walk free,\u201d Eduard Danielyan told our reporter, commenting on the officers\u2019 testimony.<\/p>\n

According to Danielyan, the officers had to be extra vigilant when it came to Martirosyan as he had a prior indictment and a history of initiating arguments and fights with his former wife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The defendant, in turn, asked the witnesses to describe his character and whether they thought he was capable of the actions he is being accused of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281011"}],"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=281011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}