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The investigating body insists: “probably, it is the identifying witnesses involved who provided false data about themselves.”

On July 15, 2015, the RA Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the ruling of the first instance court on the case of taking investigative actions by “involving” false identifying witnesses and annulled the decision of the investigating body on not initiating criminal prosecution and discontinuing criminal proceedings, based on the crime report of Pnjik Teroyan from Vanadzor, victim of the investigative actions above, and her representative, Artur Sakunts, Chairman of HCA Vanadzor.

This part of the RA Court of Appeals ruling was also upheld by the RA Court of Cassation which by its ruling of March 30, 2016, compelled the investigative body also to put an end to the violations of Pnjik Teroyan’s rights.

In response to HCA Vanadzor’s inquiry of July 17, 2016 on the actions taken to enforce the Court of Cassation ruling above and the status of the criminal case, the RA Special Investigation Service first informed that the criminal proceedings were resumed and later we received the decision of the RA SIS of September 20, 2016, according to which, the criminal proceedings were again discontinued due to the lack of elements of crime.

It is noteworthy that in the decision above, A. Minasyan, Senior Investigator for High-Profile Cases under the Head of the RA SIS, notes that “the preliminary investigation into the criminal case covered all the actions as prescribed by law but no sufficient and coherent evidence of the crime were obtained” and concludes that “probably, it is the identifying witnesses involved who provided false data about themselves”. Nevertheless, the investigating body failed to investigate adequately the last version to identify the “involved identifying witnesses’, which gives reason to assume that the investigative body, represented by A. Minasyan, Senior Investigator for High-Profile Cases, RA SIS, sponsors the illegal actions of investigators S. Mkhitaryan and M. Harutyunyan.

Note that within the investigative actions under the criminal proceedings initiated based on Pnjik Teroyan’s crime report submitted on April 4, 2012, the investigator made a number of violations. In particular, among the identifying witnesses in the investigative actions there were a police officer and persons whose identities and places of residence were unknown.

Also, the criminal proceedings, initiated after Pnjik Teroyan and her representative appealed the investigating body’s decision on rejecting initiation of criminal case based on the crime report, were discontinued shortly after.