Fighting Back: Political activist seeks justice for police brutality
By Vahan Ishkhanyan
ArmenianNow Reporter
Sept 24, 2004
”When they tied my hands behind my back I couldn’t defend myself anymore. I
was begging: ‘Please don’t hit below the belt, I can’t stand the pain
anymore . . .”
Grisha Virabyan describes the day he says he stood up for his rights and
paid a severe price for doing so.
While he was handcuffed, after attacking a policeman who insulted Virabyan’s
family, police punched and kicked 46-year old Virabyan until a testicle
ruptured.Hours after the beating, he was taken to hospital where doctors
removed the damaged testicle.
As a consequence Virabyan has tried, without success, to bring charges
against the Artashat Police Department. He says he was offered money to not
pursue the matter in court. He says the matter is not about money.
In legal documents, police deny any mistreatment of Virabyan. Doctors at the
regional hospital where he was taken, however, say he is by no means the
first detainee brought to them from the jail where he was being held, who
required urgent care.
This is Virabyan’s account of the day he says he fought back “in the name of
the Republic of Armenia”.
Grisha Virabyan is a member of the oppositional party, the Peoples Party of
Armenia.
On April 9, during mass oppositional protests, Virabyan helped organize a
march from Artashat to Yerevan (some 40 kilometers).
Police stopped a first group of marchers by putting up roadblocks – a common
practice during last spring’s opposition movement and during the previous
year’s presidential campaign protests – and sent them back to Artashat.
But a second group headed by Virabyan managed to evade the roadblocks and
reached Yerevan.
Angered by his defiance, police began a search for Virabyan, making daily
visits to his mother’s home in the village of Shahumyan. A fellow
demonstrator warned Virabyan to stay out of Artashat.
But on April 23, and on the assurance of an acquaintance who is a police
officer that he would not be detained, Virabyan returned to meet with
Artashat police, who immediately launched a case against him for failing to
obey police orders.
Virabyan says that, while interrogating Virabyan, the head of the criminal
department, Hovik Movsisyan struck him and said “f*** your mother; f*** your
parents”.
In response, Virabyan grabbed a cellphone re-charger and struck Movsisyan in
the eye (the officer later required stitches).
Another officer, who Virabyan says was Armen Arsenyan, entered the room and,
with Movsisyan, began kicking and beating Virabyan.
“I was on the ground and they were beating me,” he recalls, these five
months later. “I wasn’t responding I just wanted everything to be finished
soon and I lay down in the corner so that they could only hit my back.
“They were hitting and delivering blows directly at my kidneys. Then they
left and another policeman entered and told me to sit down. I stood up to
sit but Armen entered the room and didn’t allow me to sit. He kicked me
below my belt. The pain was terrible and I fell down. I stood up again and
he again kicked me and then for a long time he was kicking me below the
belt.”
Virabyan says Deputy Head of the Police Department of Ararat Region Ashot
Karapetyan squared the cruelest accounts with him.
”As soon as he entered the room he spat at me and hit me below the belt.
After the first blow I gripped the collar of his coat and said: ‘If we meet
in a friendly company you will feel ashamed for what you did’.”
Karapetyan ordered another officer to handcuff Virabyan.
Virabyan begged the policemen to stop the beating because he was in too much
pain.
“You’re faking it,” Karapetyan retorted.
“He began kicking me in the testicles and on my side,” Virabyan says. “His
shoes were sharp-toed. I was trying to crouch so that he couldn’t hit me
there but I couldn’t.”
ArmeniaNow requested an interview with Movsisyan, who refused, saying it was
not appropriate for a policeman to give a media interview. He did confirm
that his eye had been injured.
In his testimonies Ashot Karapetyan denies that Virabyan was hit and he says
that he was only questioned.
”I treated him very gently. I never cursed him or shouted at him,” the
officer wrote.
But another letter to the court contradicts claims that Karapetyan is a
“gentle” investigator.
Araik Vardanyan, an inmate at Nubarashen Prison wrote a letter to the court
stating that he had confessed to crimes that he didn’t commit, merely to
avoid being beaten by Karapetyan and another officer.
“In the winter, those two butchers tried several times to involve me in
accusations by means of beating and other cruelties,” Vardanyan wrote. “They
even drove me to the point that I slit my wrists.”
Natasha Voskanyan, of Sevan, also told ArmeniaNow that she was called as a
witness to Nor Nork police department (where Karapetyan formerly was
assigned) and was slapped several times by Karapetyan and that he burned her
with a cigarette to get her to give testimony as a witness in a murder case.
While Virabyan was being held at the police station, the Prosecutor’s Office
of Artashat was initiating a criminal case based on the fact that policeman
Movsisyan sustained a bodily injury.
Meanwhile, police called for a doctor to give Virabyan a sobriety test.
The head of traffic police, Avetik Harutyunyan, held a device to Virabyan’s
face and told him to blow into it. Virabyan told the officer he was not
drunk.
“Then he suddenly hit my face with his fist and again held out the ampoule.
I repeated I’m not drunk and he hit me again,” Virabyan says. “It was
repeated four times. Finally he turned and was going to leave the room but
he turned back and again punched me in the testicles.”
Doctor Anahit Gasparyan signed a document saying that Vriabyan was under the
influence of alcohol.
But the doctor told ArmeniaNow that she was unsure about the analysis
because the measuring device was old and unreliable.
The color (that indicates the level of alcohol) changed only slightly from
Virabyan’s response. She asked if the device was old. Police said they did
not know. Her assessment of Virabyan’s sobriety was based mainly on the
reaction of his eyes to tests. But, later, when she found out that he’d been
beaten, she says his response was consistent with that of someone who’d
received a blow to the head – and not, necessarily, that of a drunk man.
Only a blood test could correctly determine whether Virabyan was
intoxicated, the doctor says. But adds that she didn’t demand that the
police let her give one because “You cannot impose your rules onto members
of law enforcement . . . It made no difference whether he was drunk or not,
in any case it wouldn’t have any influence on his future.”
Virabyan was jailed. In the evening he began experiencing severe pain.
Gasparyan was called again and, upon seeing Virabyan, ordered that he must
immediately be taken to hospital.
At midnight, surgeon Ruben Liloyan examined Virabyan at the Artashat
hospital and found that he had chest and testicle injuries.
”I was worried about his chest,” Liloyan says, “because it could have been
a threat to his life. Unfortunately, I had no roentgen film and I couldn’t
X-ray him. Using clinical methods we ascertain that there was an ordinary
injury and there was no threat to his life. Concerning his testicle, we
decided to conduct an echogram in the morning. It was blackened and
enlarged. Pain made him moan.”
Virabyan was taken back to the isolation ward. The doctor says he didn’t
insist that Virabyan be kept in hospital, because he thought they would take
Virabyan home.
Liloyan also says he didn’t imagine that Virabyan’s testicle had ruptured
because such injuries are very rare. But: “Unfortunately there was a strong
blow.”
Back at the jail, Virabyan again was overcome with pain and was taken a few
hours later back to the hospital.
Doctor Gagik Hambardzumyan found that Virabyan’s scrotum was filled with
blood and determined that the testicle must be removed.
It was the first time when someone with such an injury was taken to hospital
from police, Hambardzumyan says. However, people with other injuries –
especially to the stomach – are often taken to the hospital from the police
station, the doctor says.
On the day of the operation, Virabyan’s uncle Sashik Virabyan informed
Artashat Prosecutor’s Office about the incident and later wrote an
application to the Prosecutor General of Armenia, to the Chief of Police,
and to the Prime Minister asking that charges be brought against the police.
He received no answer. In contrast, charges were brought against Virabyan on
May 3. He says he was told the charges would be dropped if he would not put
up a defense.
”I was offered money several times and asked not to defend myself,”
Virabyan told ArmeniaNow. “But I rejected their offer as I’m not going to
sell injury inflicted on me for money. I’m going to do everything so that
policemen will be punished.”
An investigation was launched, and on August 30, the Prosecutor’s Office
quashed the case, writing in his decision that Virabyan had suffered enough
physical injury to assuage any guilt for the charges brought against him.
Republic of Armenia Ombudswoman, Larisa Alaverdyan, visited Virabyan while
he was in hospital and twice appealed to the Prosecutor’s Office on his
behalf, calling for an objective investigation.
”If a man entered the police station and he was healthy, and then in the
morning he was operated on, then it means he was subjected to improper and
cruel treatment,” Alaverdyan says.
It was after Alaverdyan’s second letter that the case against Virabyan was
quashed. Now the rights’ attorney wants to see an investigation into the
behavior of police in the case.
”. . . Everything should have been brought to light,” Alaverdyan says.
“However, investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office didn’t pay attention to
everything that concerned Virabyan. Now when the case was quashed the road
is open and Grisha Virabyan can appeal and a new case can be initiated.”
Virabyan’s lawyers have sent numerous applications to the Prosecutor General
and various courts for initiating a case against Artashat police. All have
been denied.
Editor’s note: Through a grant from the World Learning Foundation,
ArmeniaNow reporter Vahan Ishkhanyan is researching a book on recent cases
in which citizens have been arrested in relation to political events. The
cases highlight episodes in which police used force or pressure against
members of oppositional political parties and participants in last spring’s
protests. This is the first in a series of articles resulting from
Ishkhanyan’s research.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress