ARMENIAN PRISON CONDITIONS AGAIN DEEMED INADEQUATE
By Ruzanna Stepanian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 5 2006

Conditions in most Armenian prisons remain harsh and in some cases
"inhumane" despite having somewhat improved since Armenia’s accession
to the Council of Europe, civil society representatives that regularly
inspect them said on Thursday.

Presenting its latest report, a monitoring team comprising
representatives of a dozen non-governmental organizations and the
Armenian Apostolic Church said the country’s four largest prisons
do not meet international standards and must be relocated to new
buildings. The detailed report, based on the team’s annual inspection
of the Armenian penitentiary facilities also concludes that most
inmates are poorly fed and not provided with adequate healthcare.

Officials from Armenian Justice Ministry department running the
prisons disagreed with that assertion, insisting that the prison
population has free access to doctors and medicine and does not suffer
from malnutrition.

Members of the monitoring team painted a similarly bleak picture
in their previous report released last year. It urged the Armenian
authorities to do more to improve the plight of the convicts. Justice
Ministry officials accepted much of the criticism at the time, but
blamed the problem on a lack of funds.

Armenia’s penitentiary system was transferred from the police to
the Justice Ministry jurisdiction in 2002 under pressure from the
Council of Europe. The measure was followed by the passage of a new,
more lenient Armenian Criminal Code that led to the early release of
most of the country’s 3,600-strong prison population.

In a July 2004 report, the European Committee for the Prevention of
Torture (CPT), a Council of Europe watchdog agency, said that although
the Armenian prison conditions have since improved they still fall
short of European standards.

According to the Armenian prison monitors, mistreatment of prisoners
is another serious problem. "While the police resort to violence to
extract confessions from suspects [kept in pre-trial detention], in
prisons violence is used as a punishment for disobedience and escape
attempts," said Avetik Ishkhanian, a human rights campaigner and
member of the monitoring group. "Sometimes beatings are very brutal."

The group’s latest report refers in particular to the alleged beating
of five inmates of a maximum-security jail in the southern town of
Goris where a riot broke out last April. Citing eyewitness accounts,
the report says the riot was quashed by a special police unit sent from
Yerevan. Security forces are also said to have also demonstratively
burned the belongings of all prisoners’ in retaliation for the protest.

Also, recent reports in the Armenian press said that four men serving
life sentences at Yerevan’s Nubarashen prison were tortured and held
in inhuman conditions following their unsuccessful attempt to break
free last July. The men reportedly tried to kill themselves after
being caught by prison guards. The prison chief denied the reports.

"I’m not saying that such cases are numerous," Ishkhanian told
reporters. "But they do happen and seem to have been frequent of late."

Vaghinak Kocharian, deputy head of the Justice Ministry’s prison
department, admitted that prison guards "use force" against inmates,
but said they do so only "in cases of emergency." "We have legally
defined sanctions against unruly convicts," he said. "So have to use
and will use force if necessary."