ARMENIAN RIGHTS GROUP CONDEMNS ‘DEADLY POLICE TORTURE’
By Ruzanna Stepanian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
June 26 2007
An Armenian human rights group joined on Tuesday the family of a
young man who died in police custody last month in alleging that he
was brutally tortured by police interrogators.
Levon Gulian was found dead on May 12 at the headquarters of
the Armenian Police Service’s Directorate General of Criminal
Investigations. He was questioned there as a presumed witness of a
deadly shooting that took place outside his restaurant in Yerevan’s
southern Shengavit district on May 9.
The police claim that he fell to his death while attempting to escape
from a second-floor interrogation room of the police building in
downtown Yerevan. Gulian’s relatives reject this, saying that that
the 31-year-old father of two was tortured to death before being
thrown out of the window.
The high-profile case has attracted a strong public resonance,
forcing the chief of the Armenian police, Hayk Harutiunian, to order
an internal investigation. The Office of the Prosecutor-General,
for its part, opened a separate criminal case in connection with the
incident. The law-enforcement authorities also agreed to an independent
examination of Gulian’s body by two European medical experts.
"I officially state that Levon Gulian was murdered," charged Mikael
Danielian, chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Association (AHA).
Ruben Martirosian, a forensic expert who works for the AHA, echoed
the allegation. "Over the past ten years I have had to take part in
300-350 autopsies, including autopsies on tortured bodies," he said.
"To be honest, I have not come across a body tortured to such an
extent before."
"So I will declare for certain that what happened was a murder preceded
by torture," added Martirosian. He admitted that he arrived at such
a conclusion after seeing only a photograph of the corpse.
The accusations came amid continuing uncertainty surrounding the
findings of a German and Danish medics that examined Gulian’s body
in a Yerevan mortuary in late May. The two men reportedly sent
their report to the Gulian family and Armenian prosecutors earlier
this month. The latter assert that the European experts essentially
endorsed the official version of events.
Excerpts from that report published by two Armenian newspapers
on Tuesday contained no definitive verdict on the precise cause of
Gulian’s death, something which was emphasized by the dead man’s wife,
Jemma Hakobian.
"We have no concrete answers," she told a joint news conference with
Danielian and Martirosian. "The report says that before his death
Levon suffered violent injures that left traces on his body."
Hakobian, who wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of her
late husband, also said that the family will publicize the full text
of the extensive report after it is translated to Armenian.