Helsinki Association Statement on Cases of Torture and Inactivity of Prosecution

Recently “Helsinki Association” Human Rights Defender NGO has made statements about the illegal acts taking place in the Prosecutor’s Office of RA.

It’s worth to mention that the Prosecutor’s Office of RA has chosen the variant of completely illegal work style in dealing with the murder of Levon Gulyan. Particularly, the Prosecutor’s Office of Yerevan, which has taken the murder case of L. Gulyan to its proceedings, refused to cooperate with the injured party. Thus, nearly all the motions of the assignees of the injured party and those of their representatives were rejected. Moreover, the Prosecutor’s Office of Yerevan tries to exert pressure on Mikael Danielyan, the representative of the assignee of the injured party and the chairman of Helsinki Association.

A huge wave of illegalities has arisen in Vanadzor, where dozens of people were brought to the police station by the law enforcement bodies of RA within the scope of the investigation of murder of A. Ghazaryan, the prosecutor of Lori region (in the end of August). Those people were illegally deprived of liberty, there were also cases of torture. Helsinki Association controls/observes the process of this case and later will make statements about the above mentioned  illegal acts.

We also have to state that the situation in the army is quite alarming. Grave crimes, cases of violent deaths and suicides of soldiers has recently increased a lot and the criminal actions of military prosecution contributes to it, when the committed crimes are incorrectly legally classified: the murders are represented as suicides or manslaughters. The investigation agency does not take any steps to reveal the reasons of such crimes or to erase them.

Helsinki Association considers that the Prosecutor’s Office is responsible for all this, as it has gone astray from its main function of maintaining legality.  

HELSINKI ASSOCIATION
11.09.2007