Executive Summary (Not Official)

The Office of the Prosecutor General, which supervised the pre-trial investigation, failed to reveal the deficiencies and violations committed throughout the investigation and failed to take measures to address them. V. Harutyunyan, the Leader of the Investigative Team of the Special Investigative Service, had the obligation to consider the impermissibility of the use, as a basis for charges, of evidence obtained in breach of 105(1.3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, i.e. evidence obtained by a person that did not have the power to conduct investigative proceedings or to perform investigative or other procedural actions in the criminal case.

During the pre-trial investigation, the Investigative Team gravely violated the law, resulting, among other things, in the disappearance of H. Tadevosyan’s bullet-proof vest during the pre-trial investigation. The Fact Finding Group has found that H. Tadevosyan was the only victim whose clothes (included bullet-proof vest) had undergone a repeat examination. The examination protocol compiled by K. Hovsepyan does not mention the bullet-proof vest that had been worn by H. Tadevosyan, which had been “taken” from the “providing” senior nurse Eloyan by Yerevan Police Center Investigative Unit investigator A. Tadevosyan, whose protocol actually did mention the bullet-proof vest. Obviousely, the bullet-proof vest was significant for purposes of establishing the circumstances of H. Tadevosyan’s death.

There is inconsistent information about the existence or absence of fragments on H. Tadevosyan’s shoes. In the forensic examination, A. Hovhannisyan had discovered one metal fragment on H. Tadevosyan’s right shoe, whereas A. Tadevosyan’s examination (the first examination) had not found any fragment on the shoes and investigator K. Hovsepyan’s (second) examination of H. Tadevosyan’s clothes had found two metal fragments on the left shoe. K. Hovsepyan and H. Terteryan both insisted in front of the Fact Finding Group that they had seen two metal fragments on the left shoe and none on the right shoe. A. Hovhannisyan in turn insisted that there were no fragments on the left shoe and that he only saw one fragment on the right shoe.

Without any clear justification, expert A. Hovhannisyan had concluded that the explosion had taken place near H. Tadevosyan’s feet. This conclusion of the expert is not credible, because he reached the conclusion regarding the source of the explosion not being informed of and not considering the fact that H. Tadevosyan had been wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The Fact Finding Group believes that the large hematoma in the retroperitoneal space was caused by a shockwave, which means that the explosion occurred near H. Tadevosyan’s genitals, which the expert accepted before the Fact Finding Group but had failed to mention in his report.

The reports issued by the forensic experts neither are adequately substantiated nor answer all the questions posed by the investigators: this has limited the ability of the investigating body to consider all the possible hypotheses of police officer H. Tadevosyan’s death, including possibility of the explosion from a grenade that might have been at his possession.

All these breaches seriously undermine the official version of the investigation, based on the presumption that the explosion resulted from a grenade thrown by the demonstrators.

The Fact Finding Group finds it necessary:

To carry out an additional complex forensic medical and forensic explosive-technical examination with the participation of international experts to establish the circumstances of H. Tadevosyan’s death; and
To consider the possibility of applying disciplinary or criminal sanctions stipulated by law against the persons that violated the law and performed deficiently during the pre-trial investigation.