RA Cassation Court sent complaint under ‘Mataghis’ case for re-examination; court hearing to be held on June 9, 2017
18:25, June 9, 2017 | News, Own news
As we informed before, following the European Court of Human Rights judgment on ‘Mataghis’ case of March 19, 2016, on September 13, 2016 Arayik Zalyan applied to the RA Cassation Court to initiate proceedings based on new circumstances.
Note that the European Court of Human Rights found violation of Article 3 (Prohibition of torture) and Article 5 (Right to liberty and security of person) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Particularly, the ECtHR stated that Arayik Zalyan, Mussa Serobyan and Razmik Sargsyan were illegally deprived of their liberty on April 19-24, 2004 and the State did not carry out any effective investigation into the fact of subjecting them to torture.
It should be noted that the RA Prosecutor General’s Office initiated no criminal proceedings following the victims’ report of December 12, 2005 on illegal deprivation of liberty and ill-treatment. The complaint against the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office submitted on January 8, 2006 was rejected by both the first instance court and the court of appeals.
By its ruling of April 12, 2017, the RA Cassation Court found well-grounded A. Zalyan’s complaint on initiating review proceedings and referring to the ECtHR’s precedent rulings, reiterated: “Unless the authorities punish the state agents for ill-treatment and only confine themselves to providing the victim with compensation, such agents will get the opportunity to remain unpunished and infringe on the rights of those under their control.”
The RA Cassation Court stated that the most proper way to reduce violation of Article 3 of the Convention was to reverse the challenged judicial acts on the part of A. Zalyan and send them to re-examination.
Thus, the RA Cassation Court reversed the rulings of the first instance court and court of appeals on rejecting the victims’ complaint against the decision on not initiating criminal proceedings.
The General Jurisdiction Court of Kentron and Nork-Marash administrative districts of Yerevan city, RA, will examine the complaint of A. Zalyan and others on June 9, 2017, at 4:30 pm.