Epress.am News from Armenia
A criminal case was launched in connection with police use of force against Hayk Kyureghyan, who opened fire outside a Yerevan courtroom on June 12, but no one has yet been arrested or detained. It is still unknown whether Kyureghyan is recognized as a victim in this case or not: a decision to recognize him as a victim has not yet been presented, reports local daily Haykakan Zhamanak.
Kyureghyan's attorney Yervand Varosyan, in conversation with the paper, said no investigation regarding his client has been conducted, and he doesn't know whether police officers have been questioned or not.
"I am more than convinced that a number of police officers will be questioned, who will say that no, nothing like that happened [i.e. they didn’t apply force against Kyureghyan], and the criminal case will be quashed. This conviction comes from the fact that there are cases in which the period of the use of violence is even caught on film, but the case is quashed," he says.
According to him, Kyureghyan described in detail how he was beaten.
"First, Hayk Kyureghyan was beaten immediately in the police vehicle, while he was wearing handcuffs, before arriving at the station; then different people subjected him to violence in two different rooms at the central police division — and, by the way, at the beating in the second room, there were also police officers in civilian clothes.
"Kyureghyan doesn't recognize the police officers, but he told the investigator that if he were to see them, he might be able to identify some of them, adding that you can see in the video [exactly] who is sitting in the police vehicle. The blows were issued to different parts of [his] body, with hands, as Hayk says. Also, different types of curses were heard during that time," he said.
Recall, at the start of the June 12 hearing in the case of Shant Harutyunyan and his friends, Kyureghyan climbed onto a car outside the courthouse and shot rounds from what seemed to be an air pistol in the police's direction, attempting, he said, to prevent "an erroneous judgment on Shant."
Kyureghyan informed head of a group of civil society members monitoring conditions in Armenian prisons and detention centers Hasmik Sahakyan, who had come to visit him at the Erebuni temporary detention center, that he was ill-treated during and after the arrest.