Prosecutors Probe Another Death In Armenian Police Custody
By Asbarez
Apr 16th, 2010

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-Armenian prosecutors have taken over a criminal
investigation into the suspicious death of a young man in police
custody, which is casting a renewed spotlight on notorious
interrogation techniques of the Armenian police.

The Special Investigative Service (SIS), the investigating arm of the
Office of the Prosecutor-General, on Friday challenged police claims
that Vahan Khalafian stabbed himself to death at a police station in
Charentsavan, a small town about 40 kilometers north of Yerevan.

Khalafian and three other young men were detained by the Charentsavan
police Tuesday on suspicion of stealing 1.5 million drams ($3,800)
worth of goods from another local resident. A statement issued by the
national police service the next day said all of them confessed to the
crime.

The statement claimed that after the interrogation, Khalafian suddenly
took a `kitchen knife’ from a police officer’s drawer and fatally
wounded himself in the stomach. It said the 24-year-old suffered from
a mental disorder and was exempted from military service for that
reason in 2005.

The Armenian police chief, Alik Sargsian, stood by this version of
events at a news conference held on Wednesday. He dismissed claims,
made by the dead man’s relative and backed by some Armenian
newspapers, that Khalafian was tortured to death.

The police launched a criminal case in connection with the incident
under an article of the Armenian Criminal Code dealing with suicides.
The SIS announced on Friday that it has taken over the inquiry and is
considering several theories, including `a hypothesis about Vahan
Khalafian’s murder by employees of the Charentsavan division of the
Armenian police.’

In a written statement, the SIS pointed to a forensic examination of
Khalafian’s body that was conducted in Yerevan on Thursday in the
presence of one of the man’s uncles, Vartan Khalafian. The
law-enforcement agency did not publicize its findings, saying only
that the corpse will undergo `several other examinations’ in the
coming days.

The Yerevan daily `Haykakan Zhamanak’ on Friday quoted another
Khalafian uncle, Hamik, as saying that forensic experts found two deep
cuts on the dead man’s stomach and injuries in other parts of his
body. He said they also did not detect any tears on Khalafian’s shirt
that might have been caused by a sharp object.

`If we believe the police theory, the young man took out the knife,
then bared his belly and stabbed himself,’ wrote `Haykakan Zhamanak.’
`What is more, he did that twice and kept the belly bare in the
process.’ `It’s not hard to tell just how credible such a scenario
is,’ added the paper.

Artur Sakunts, a prominent human rights campaigner investigating the
affair, openly accused the Charentsavan police of brutally
ill-treating Khalafian during the interrogation. He claimed that the
three other local residents suspected of theft were also beaten up in
police custody.

Ill-treatment of criminal suspects has long been regarded as the most
frequent form of human rights violations in Armenia. Local and
international human rights groups continue to accuse the police and
other law-enforcement bodies of extracting confessions by force and
intimidation.

`Witnesses continued to report that police beat citizens during arrest
and interrogation while in detention,’ the U.S. State Department said
in its annual report on human rights practices in Armenia released
last month. It said `most cases of police mistreatment continued to go
unreported because of fear of retribution.’ Armenian courts usually
dismiss torture claims made by suspects, added the report.

The Charentsavan incident is bound to prompt parallels with the May
2007 death in police custody of Levon Gulian, a 31-year-old resident
of Yerevan. Gulian was questioned at the police Directorate General of
Criminal Investigations as a presumed witness of a deadly shooting
that took place outside a restaurant belonging to him.

The police claimed that Gulian fell to his death while attempting to
escape from a second-floor interrogation room of the police building
in downtown Yerevan. Gulian’s relatives, backed by human rights
groups, vehemently disputed the claim, saying that he was apparently
tortured before being thrown out of the window.

A resulting public outcry forced Armenia’s Office of the
Prosecutor-General to launch an official inquiry into the
circumstances of the Gulian’s death. The inquiry ended in March 2008
with an endorsement of the police version of the incident.

Three months later, a Yerevan court backed the Gulian family’s demand
for a new inquiry. The SIS conducted and terminated the inquiry in
April 2009, citing lack of evidence of police torture.