HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Convicted Murderer Ends 40 Day Hunger Strike: “My mom pleaded with me to stop”

Zaruhie Medjlumyan
Edik Baghdasaryan 

26 year-old claims he’s innocent and hunger strike was a cry for a fair retrial

Ashot Shahzadyan, sentenced to twenty years for the murder of a fellow villager,  told Hetq that he recently ended a forty day hunger strike after his mother pleaded with him.

All along his mother was staging a hunger strike at home in solidarity with her son.

Shahzadyan, a 26 year-old resident of the village of Ayntap, has always claimed his innocence of the charges (the attempted rape and murder of 58 year-old Gayaneh Asoyan), and argues that going on hunger strike was the only option left to get a fair retrial of the case.

The young man has already served three years of his sentence at the Artik Correctional Facility.

Shahzadyan told Hetq that he applied to the appeals court, hoping that his case would be reviewed.

But none of the higher courts agreed with Shahzadyan, sustaining the lower court’s ruling –that he murdered Asoyan in a drunken rage.

The prosecution had argued that Shahzadyan murdered the woman after she called him an “impudent boy” for talking loudly on his cell phone. But the court’s investigation revealed that Shahzadyan wasn’t using his phone on the date and time in question.

According to the original indictment, Shahzadyan raped the woman before killing her. But given that forensics found no sperm on the body, it was changed to attempted rape.

Hetq reporters visited the Ararat and Vayots Dzor General Jurisdiction Court where three volumes of case materials regarding the Shahzadyan are being held. This is what we were able to find.

Who was Gayaneh Asoyan?

Asoyan was a woman who had suffered two brain concussions. She had married and divorced twice. She was able to receive free state medical treatment by claiming that she was the former wife of an Artsakh freedom fighter. She has one daughter from her first marriage and a son from the second. Her financial situation wasn’t good. One year before her death, she had sold her apartment in Yerevan, paid off her debts, and purchased an inexpensive house in Ayntap village. The house didn’t have any electricity.

Who would want to see Asoyan dead?

From the outset, the criminal investigation team followed just one version of events – that Ashot Shahzadyan was the prime suspect. The team failed to pursue any other leads or to reveal who had a motive to kill Asoyan.

Asoyan’s sisters, however, had testified that Gayaneh had gone to the hospital and they went to visit her there. Gayaneh told them that the house was indeed registered in her daughter’s name, but that when she was discharged, she would register the house in her son’s name. The court overlooked all of this.

In addition, during the pre-trial examination, Shahzadyan had mentioned the name of fellow villager Temour Djavoyan, who left for Germany ten days after the murder.

Why didn’t police investigators pursue Temour Djavoyan?


In October 2011, senior investigator K. Tadevosyan ruled out any criminal search for Djavoyan, arguing a lack of evidence implicating him.

Tadevosyan had merely interviewed Djavoyan’s relatives and neighbors as to what the man was wearing on May 26, 2011, the day of the murder. Ashot Shahzadyan had testified that Djavoyan had been wearing a red jacket and that Djavoyan had called to him from the entrance to Asoyan’s house, saying that something had to be moved.

Four years after the incident, Djavoyan’s relatives and neighbors recalled that he was wearing a white, not a red, jacket.  The senior investigator took their statement at face value and called off a search for Djavoyan.

They testified that Djavoyan went to Germany to see his brother who was living there since 2005. They didn’t know the city or an address. But the court materials include notices from several embassies and the RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Djavoyan never applied to them for a visa.

In his interview with Hetq, Ashot Shahzadyan noted that he spotted Djavoyan’s mother in the hallway of the police station two days after he had been taken into custody.

“I didn’t understand what she was doing there,” Shahzadyan told Hetq.

 (To be continued) 

Comments (1)

hasmik
ինչքան կալանավոր, այնքան լավ, սա է սերժիկի նշանաբանը, քանի անմեղներ են բանտերում, իսկ մարդսպաները ազատության մեջ, ամոթ սերժիկին

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter