ARMENIAN POLICE AGAIN DENY DEADLY TORTURE
By Emil Danielyan and Ruzanna Stepanian
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
May 22 2007
The Armenian police insisted on Tuesday that a young man who died in
police custody earlier this month was not tortured by his interrogators
despite claims to the contrary made by his family and local human
rights groups.
Presenting the "preliminary results" of an internal inquiry into
the high-profile incident, the Police Service stood by its earlier
assertion that Levon Gulian fell to his death while attempting to
escape from the police headquarters in Yerevan where he was being
questioned as a murder witness.
The inquiry was ordered by the chief of the law-enforcement agency,
Lieutenant-General Hayk Harutiunian, last week in response to an
outcry sparked by Gulian’s death. The 30-year-old man’s relatives
believe that he was tortured to death during the interrogation. Local
and international human rights organizations have given weight to
these allegations, saying that police torture has long been the norm
in Armenia.
Gulian was detained and questioned as a witness of a deadly shooting
that took place outside his restaurant in Yerevan’s southern Shengavit
district on May 9. Family members say he told them that he was beaten
by Shengavit police officers before being taken to the Police Service’s
Directorate General of Criminal Investigations for what proved to be
his last interrogation on May 12.
The family agreed to bury the father of two on Monday only after his
body, which they say had traces of violence, was examined by medical
experts from Belgium and Germany. The two experts were due to present
their conclusions to journalists in Yerevan on Saturday. But their
news conference was cancelled at the last minute for reasons that
remain unclear.
Armen Harutiunian, Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, said
law-enforcement authorities asked them not to publicize their findings
for now in the interests of a separate criminal investigation conducted
by state prosecutors. But according to Karen Hakobian, a human rights
activist who help to arrange the independent forensic examination, the
experts simply need more time to ascertain the cause of Gulian’s death.
"I think we will be able to present their findings to you within a
week," Hakobian told reporters on Saturday.
The Office of the Prosecutor-General launched its investigation under
an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that deals with cases where
individuals are forced to commit suicide. The police insisted, however,
that Gulian tried to escape through the window of a second-floor
interrogation room and accidentally "fell down in the process."
In a written statement, police also claimed that Gulian witnessed
and was even involved in the mysterious shooting, saying that the
battery of his mobile phone was found by the body of another young
shot dead outside his restaurant. "During the interrogations L. Gulian
hid important facts relating to the case and the identity of the
individuals who committed the murder," the statement said.
Gulian’s relatives insist that he only told a group of quarrelling
men to walk away from the restaurant moments before the shooting and
knew nothing else about its circumstances. Joined by dozens of civil
society activists and other people and holding candles, they silently
marched to the main police building in Yerevan later on Saturday.