One might be held criminally liable for complaining against violence by the police
11:36, May 3, 2015On June 4, 2014, the RA SIS initiated a criminal case upon the application by Alexander Tsveryanov. Back on November 30, 2012, at about 7:30 am, the police officers of Yerevan Erebuni Police Department apprehended Alexander Tsveryanov to the police station and by exerting violence and threats forced him to provide self-confession evidence on committing various robberies. By the way, on May 30, 2014, Alexander Tsveryanov was declared by a court ruling not guilty of committing any of the 16 robberies he provided self-confession for. On December 11, 2014, the Criminal Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal of the prosecutor and upheld the acquittal of Alexandr Tsveryanov. At the same time, after the investigation by the SIS of the case on police violence against Alexander Tsveryanov, on March 31, 2015, Lieutenant Colonel of Justice V. Avetisyan, Deputy Chief of the SIS Torture and Humanity Crimes Investigation Department, decreed not to initiate criminal prosecution against the police officers and against Alexander Tsveryanov on the grounds of the lack of any elements of crime in the actions of the persons above. Hence, the RA Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal found that the charges against Alexander Tsveryanov were baseless. Therefore, all the evidence to the effect that Alexander Tsveryanov committed the 16 robberies proves groundless. This means that either Alexander Tsveryanov confessed of his own free will committing the crimes he had never actually committed, or he was forced to confess that, or the investigator and the police officers forged the evidence. Irrespective of all these causes, the case above provides at least sufficient grounds to qualify the actions of the police as unlawful. Or, the SIS should have initiated criminal proceedings against both the court of first instance and the Court of Appeal which, according to the logic behind the SIS investigator’s decree, issued judgments in contradiction to the justice. The fact is that Alexander Tsveryanov had been imprisoned without any grounds for at least 19 months, and no one will be held liable for this. The SIS decree was appealed before the RA Prosecutor General’s Office, which, however, dismissed the appeal. Presently, an appeal is drafted against the decree of the SIS investigator to be filed with a court of law.