Sevan resident Sevak Voskanyan has addressed a letter to Armenia\u2019s General Prosecutor Artur Davtyan, in which claims he was beaten up and tortured at a police station. Voskanyan has now gone into hiding, and his relatives turned to Nikol Pashinyan, a lawmaker from the opposition Yelk alliance, asking him to publish the letter. Pashinyan subsequently posted the letter on his personal Facebook page.<\/p>\n
Read the English translation of the letter below:<\/em><\/p>\n – I\u2019m reporting to you know that several days ago Sevan police officer Vahag Mikayelyan called from the 098-78-10-17 number and told me to go meet with him. We met, and Vahag told me: \u2018Your old friend Hayk Avanesyan has been caught, be careful because something could happen to you, too. I\u2019ll let you know.\u2019 One or two days later, on August 18 at 10:30am, Vahag called me from a different number and again asked me to meet him.<\/p>\n We agreed to meet by the mobile gas station next to the Sevan railway. When I got there Vahag wasn\u2019t there, so I called him to ask where he was and he said he\u2019d be there in 3 minutes. A bit later a black car stopped next to me – it was a corolla camry [sic]<\/em> – and two people clothed entirely in black and wearing black masks got out of it and attacked me. They hit me on my shoulders, handcuffed me and put me in the car, hitting me on my head. Then they pushed my neck down to my knees, swearing at me and insulting me.<\/p>\n I told them: \u2018Guys, please don\u2019t hit me, let me breathe and understand what\u2019s happening.\u2019 The one sitting next to the driver turned around and told me not to call them \u2018guys.\u2019 Then he squeezed my head between his palms and hit it on the car seat. They\u2019d ask me whether I knew why they had caught me, I asked why and they said there were 5 corpses on me. They were hitting me and swearing at me the entire time. They talked to someone on the phone on the way and told him: \u2018Dear Arakelyan, we\u2019ll get there soon.\u201d<\/p>\n They took me to the Gavar police department and then to some office. There the masked ones began hitting me – on my shoulders, on my back; they were slapping me. Then they took me to another office; some 5 or 6 people gathered there and began asking whether I knew why they had brought me there.<\/p>\n One of those present who was in civilian clothes presented another one as Arakel and said: \u2018You know who he is? He is the department\u2019s Arakelyan; he lays down even thugs, ruins them and cookes up really serious cases on them.\u2019 Then Arakelyan himself told me: \u2018Tell me the truth. Remember the May of 2008 and tell me about the incident with your friend Roman.\u2019<\/p>\n On that day [Roman] was knifed. I told him that I had nothing to do with it, that I had already been questioned about that by a criminal investigator. At that moment the masked ones came at me and began hitting and cursing me. Arakelyan said: \u2018This one doesn\u2019t know us very well. That\u2019s fine; the guys will work a couple of rounds on him, then they\u2019ll pull down his pants and smash a tube inside his ass, then he\u2019ll tell us.\u2019 I was already very scared, so I asked them to leave me alone with Arakelyan.<\/p>\n Everyone left the room; Arakelyan swore by his father\u2019s name that Hayk had confessed and was now making me out to be the organizer. I told him Hayk would never do that, that it was a lie. Arakelyan got enraged and said: \u2018I\u2019ll tell the masked ones to smash a tube inside your ass.\u2019 I was intimidated, I didn\u2019t know what to do, and he was continuing to pressure me. He said that Hayk had already turned on me and why I wouldn\u2019t want to get back at him.<\/p>\n He then said: \u2018Your cousin Edgar was the one who introduced you to Hayk, and it were you two who did it. I got scared and said that my cousin had done it and that Hayk had nothing to do with it. I said this because Hayk is dead. Arakelyan said: \u2018If you want to get out and see your child again, you have to name Hayk so he turns into a mummy in jail.\u2019<\/p>\n I was scared, but I also believed his words and said that I would do it. Then he began dictating me what to say. Then 2 investigators from Sevan came to the department – Petrosyan and some Hovo. Arakelyan told them that I had confessed and began telling them how everything had happened and asking me whether it was correct.<\/p>\n After that I was taken back to the Gavar station. The investigators never talked to me personally. Investigator Hovo typed up Arakelyan\u2019s story on a computer and gave it to me to sign as my own testimony. I wrote that it was all true and signed it.<\/p>\n Dear Mr. Prosecutor, that testimony is a lie; it was coerced into signing it through blackmail, beatings and psychological pressure.<\/p>\n I was held at the police station for 10-11 hours, without any food. They did not let me call anyone. Only at the end of the questioning was I allowed to make a call with the investigator\u2019s phone. I ask you to punish all those people who subjected me to these unlawful actions.<\/p>\n Voskanyan The one sitting next to the driver turned around and told me not to call them \u2018guys.\u2019 Then he squeezed my head between his palms…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66030],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281852"}],"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=281852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n19.08.2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"