A Yerevan court today handed down a three-month pre-trial detention order for Pavel Manukyan, one of the Sasna Dzrer members who seized a police building in Yerevan on July 17 and continue to occupy it.
Lawyer Tigran Hayrapetyan, who recently visited Yeghnukyan, says when his client asked why he was being held, his captors merely said that he had supported the Sasna Dzrer group during the past two days and had been in telephone contact with them.
Yerevan police prohibited the wife of arrested opposition activist Jirayr Sefilian from visiting him in jail today where he’s awaiting trial on illegal arms trafficking and possession.
According to lawyer Ara Karagyuzyan, the above photo depicts Vaghinak Shoushanyan after being released from police custody last night.
For the high school graduates of the Artsakh villages of Talish and Mataghis, the “last bell” was rung in other communities across Armenia and Karabakh.
Mrs. Svetlana Khalapyan and her two sons have only been in Arzni, a village in Armenia’s Kotayk Province, for a month. But they started working the small plot the second day after arriving from Artsakh. Afterwards, they purchased some piglets and chickens.
“Oh, you’re looking for the rats’ nest,” a local kid replied when we asked for directions. He pointed to a building nearby. “But be careful. It’s full of rats in there.”
The woman has seen three wars in her lifetime – WWII, the 1990s Artsakh War, and the most recent Four Day War. “I have a hard head,” she jokes.
“We found a house in Masis to live. The kids will go to school there until we decide what to do next,” says Marineh.
I met 17 year-old Anoush Ohanyan in Charentsavan, Armenia.
Today, the offices of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union in Armenia organized a roundtable discussion on the issue of prison overcrowding and recommendations made by the CoE to address the situation.
20-year-old Taron Arakelyan has been serving out his sentence at the Nubarashen Penitentiary.
Petrosyan, who has prior convictions, plead guilty to the theft. He argued that he planned to sell the birds and thus make some money to take care of his wife and two kids.
Tatoyan said that he didn’t agree with the viewpoint that HRD’s in Armenia has not been able to effectively protect the rights of citizens.
The trial is being conducted behind closed doors, something which Kuyumjian’s lawyers Inessa Petrosyan and Karen Mezhlumyan describe as preventing public oversight.
Investigations are still continuing regarding the use of force by police against protestors who demonstrated on June 23 of last year on Yerevan’s Baghramyan Avenue against electricity rate hikes.
Tsolak Poghosyan, now in his thirteenth year behind bars in Armenia, recently sent a letter to Investigative Journalists NGO President Edik Baghdasaryan, asking for assistance in getting his criminal case reviewed.
An Armenian court yesterday partially ruled in favor of Tigran Sargsyan, a former prime minister of Armenia now serving as the country’s ambassador to the U.S., in a slander suit he filed against businessman Paylak Hayrapetyan and the Shamshyan.com news site.
Attempting to verify the news, Hetq contacted the Department of Corrections at the Ministry of Justice and we were told that 28 petitions had been received by inmates regarding a declaration of the hunger strike. (It seems that in Armenia, prison officials must be informed in advance of any hunger strike)
Hayk Kyureghyan, sentenced to nine years for discharging an air pistol towards police, today ended his 26 day protest hunger strike.
Yerevan resident Zarouhie Mouradyan told Hetq that it took her 30 minutes and raising a bit of a stink to convince local election officials to file an official report when she found that others had voted in her stead at yesterday’s constitutional change referendum.
Of the 127 foreign national serving time in Armenia’s prisons in November 2015, 87 are from Georgia, Russia and Iran.
Armenia’s Criminal Appeals Court today let stand a September 15 decision by a lower court sentencing Hayk Kyureghyan to nine years behind bars for firing an air pistol in the direction of police on July 12, 2014.
Fifty inmates serving life sentences at Armenia’s Noubarashen Correctional Facility have resumed their hunger strike after not hearing a response to their demands from the ministry of justice.
Soghomon Kocharyan, the Artsakh War vet released after serving 21 years of a life sentence for murder on health reasons on October 22 and who passed away yesterday will be buried at the Yerablour Military Memorial Cemetery outside Yerevan this Wednesday.
Soghomon Kocharyan, released for health reasons on October 22 after serving 20 years in prison, succumbed to a number of illnesses and passed away last night in a Yerevan hospital.
Concluding a Freedom of Information suit dating back seven months, on October 30 Armenia’s Administrative Court finally declared the case closed when Judge Liana Hakobyan (photo) found that the Police had turned over the information, in court, that had been requested by Hetq for an investigative piece it was writing.
There are 269 children enrolled in the Loukashin village school in Armenia’s Armavir Province. 55 of them come from families with more than one child.
Armenia’s Gegharkounik Provincial Court yesterday issued a decision verifying that two children who moved to Armenia from Mongolia four years ago were the biological offspring of Hrahat Yeritsyan.
Hetq’s investigation has revealed, however, that EU program assistance information is practically inaccessible to the Armenian public. There is little transparency on the matter.
Fifty families live in a dormitory located in the Armavir village of Loukashin.
Hetq won a freedom of information suit against the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) seeking to be allowed access to court material regarding the 1995 trial of Soghomon Kocharyan.
Relatives of Those Serving Life Highly Doubt Their Petition Will Ever Reach Justice Minister
“I have been waiting for freedom for twenty years, thus I request that a decision be made the same day, October 22,” reads the petition.
The sagging clothesline in the yard shows that the family residing inside includes a large bunch of kids.
Their relatives told Hetq that the prisoners have handed a ten point petition, addressed to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, to the head of the Noubarashen Penitentiary where they are serving out their sentences.
In its two Freedom of Information suits, one filed against the police in Armenia and the other against the General Prosecutor’s office, the Investigative Journalists NGO will settle out of court with the former and awaits a final court decision on October 22 on the latter.
Two ‘freedom of information’ suits filed by the Investigative Journalists (IJ) NGO, one against the General Prosecutor’s Office and the other, the police, began yesterday at Armenia’s Administrative Court.
Even though a Yerevan hospital advised the Noubarashen Penitentiary housing lifer Soghomon Kocharyan, now into his 21st year behind bars, to transfer him to the Convicts’ Hospital for vital treatment as of August 5, the facility failed to do so for two additional weeks.
The defendant never heard the sentence read out loud by Judge Armen Bektashyan. Not following the judge’s demand that all stand during the declaration of the sentence, Kyureghyan was whisked from the courtroom.
The trial of Hayk Kyureghyan, detained for over a year for discharging an air pistol in the direction of the police on July 12, 2014, ended almost as soon as it started today after his supporters raised a ruckus about not being able to attend the proceedings at Yerevan’s Kentron and Nork-Marash Administrative Court.
The documentary is dedicated to the memory of Suzanna Kocharyan, daughter of life-term prisoner Soghomon Kocharyan.
49 year-old Kamo Shalounts, an Artsakh War vet who has spent the last twenty years in Armenian prisons after being found guilty for the premeditated murder of two people, has written to Hetq complaining that the institute of conditional release does not exist in Armenia and that he does receive a pension will behind bars.
Ruben Baloyan, representing the Hakobyan family, now has five days in which to make corrections and re-file the appeal asking that Petrosyan’s sentence, handed down by the Kotayk Regional Court on January 29 of this year, be changed to a minimum of six years.
Maroukyan claims he was tortured by the police into making a confession. He says that police even shot him in the back and that the bullet is still lodged in his body.
IJ President Edik Baghdasaryan had sent an email request to Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan, requesting that the department provide information as to how many complaints had the Police received regarding two citizens – Naira Asatryan and Varuzhan Margaryan – within the past five years.
At today’s court session regarding The Investigative Journalists (IJ)NGO Freedom of Information petition to oblige the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) to provide information in the case of Soghomon Kocharyan, who is serving a life sentence in an Armenian prison, Judge Lianna Hakobyan asked the PGO’s attorney why his client hadn’t responded to the INJ’s request on two occasions.
Mrs. Kocharyan has told Hetq that she is calling on the Minster of Justice and the Chief Warden of the Nubarashen Penitentiary to transfer her son to the penal hospital.