ARRESTED POLICEMAN CHARGED WITH TORTURE
Ruzanna Stepanian
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29.04.2010
Armenia — Vahan Khalafian, a 24-year-old man who died in police
custody on 13 April 2010.
An Armenian police officer was charged on Thursday with torturing
a young man who died at the police station of the central town of
Charentsavan earlier this month.
The development announced by the Special Investigative Service
(SIS) is a massive blow to the credibility of police claims that
Vahan Khalafian was not ill-treated by his interrogators and simply
committed suicide in police custody.
In a written statement, the SIS said its investigators have found that
Ashot Harutiunian, one of two police officers arrested in the ongoing
inquiry, "used force" against Khalafian after the 24-year-old refused
to confess to a theft committed in Charentsavan. The law-enforcement
agency subordinated to Armenian prosecutors said the conclusion is
based on testimony given by several other local police officers who
were present at the April 13 interrogation.
According to a spokeswoman for Armenia’s Office of the
Prosecutor-General, the policemen reaffirmed it during a face-to-face
questioning with Harutiunian. "They insisted on their testimony,
saying that force was indeed used," Sona Truzian told RFE/RL’s
Armenian service.
"The head of the criminal investigations unit [at the Charentsavan
police] did use violence against Vahan Khalafian," Truzian said,
referring to Harutiunian. She said the latter was charged under a
Criminal Code article dealing with abuse of power which is "accompanied
by use of violence" and causes "severe consequences." The charge
carries between six and ten years’ imprisonment.
Harutiunian was arrested on Monday on suspicion of prodding Khalafian
to commit suicide. A corresponding accusation has been leveled against
one of his police subordinates who was placed under arrest last week.
Whether the SIS believes Khalafian died as a result of torture or,
as has been claimed by the Armenian police, stabbed himself to death
is not yet clear. Truzian said SIS investigators will answer this
question after the continuing forensic examinations of Khalafian’s
body. The SIS statement said the investigators have still not received
their final results.
Armenia — Police chief Alik Sargsian holds a news conference, 14 April
2010.Khalafian’s relatives say forensic medics detected at least two
stab wounds on his abdomen and numerous bruises in other parts of
his body during the first examination conducted on April 15. They
says this proves their view that the young man was tortured to death.
The police have categorically denied this so far. "I am officially
stating that there was not a single injury on his body," the chief
of the national police service, Alik Sargsian, assured journalists
on April 14.
"I want to make clear that there was no torture," Sargsian insisted,
speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian service several days later. He claimed
that Khalafian confessed to the crime and that there was "simply no
point in subjecting him to torture."
The police on Thursday declined to react to the new embarrassing twist
in the SIS-led inquiry into an incident that has cast renewed spotlight
on their notorious interrogation techniques. A police spokesman told
RFE/RL that Sargsian will comment "in the coming days."
Local and international human rights groups, which believe that
police brutality is commonplace in Armenia, have expressed serious
concern about Khalafian’s death and urged the authorities to properly
investigate it. In an April 21 letter to Prosecutor-General Aghvan
Hovsepian, Human Rights Watch said such an inquiry would stem from
Armenia’s "international obligations."
"Armenian authorities have an obligation to provide a complete
and plausible explanation for and account of any death in custody,
based on a thorough and independent investigation which establishes
the extent of the liability of the authorities in whose custody the
deceased was when he died," the New York-based group said. "Failure
to carry out such an investigation and to pursue any appropriate
prosecutions of those responsible would bring Armenia in violation
of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights."
A similar statement was issued on Tuesday by the Paris-based
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and three Armenian
human rights groups. "This is not the first case of a person dying in
[Armenian] police custody," said the statement.