RA court rulings on keeping Hovhannes Ghazaryan, supporter of the Founding Assembly in detention will be challenged before the ECtHR
11:13, February 8, 2017 | News, Own news | Sasna Tsrer
On January 23, 2017, the General Jurisdiction Court of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts of Yerevan city, RA, again extended by 2 months the period of detention of Hovhannes Ghazaryan, supporter of the Founding Parliament and participant of the protests following the seizure of the RA Police Patrol and Guard Service Regiment by ‘Sasna Tsrer’ group on July 17, 2016. He will remain in custody till March 30, 2017.
Note that he was charged under Article 225 of the RA Criminal Code for using violence during mass riots by their participant [….] armed resistance to a representative of the authorities.
Both the charges brought against him, and the arguments for extending the detention are absolutely groundless and no substantial fact in support of them was detected during the months-long preliminary investigation.
Notably, for already 6 months, all the motions of the investigative agency on extending Hovhannes Gazaryan’s detention period are substantiated by the volume of the investigative actions and are almost similar in their content and rationale, whereas according to them a number of procedural actions were carried out under the initiated criminal proceedings, and actually no new facts were revealed, which is at least doubtful and strange. And if we also take into account that Hovhannes Ghazaryan has never attempted to escape investigation, all the arguments on his detention become groundless.
Hovhannes Ghazaryan does not admit the charges brought against him and can see a tendency in the actions of the investigative agency towards presenting him as a criminal and creating a false impression about his personality.
The constant claims of Hovhannes Ghazaryan’s lawyer Ani Chatinyan, Lawyer at HCA Vanadzor, to the effect that by this step, the authorities try to silence the protestors and “threaten” that the same fate will be shared by all those who dare to take to the streets and exercise their rights enshrined in the Constitution are supported by the reprisal at the state level against the supporters of ‘Sasna Tsrer’ group. These practices are manifested both in the current judicial processes and through transferring the protestors without any reasons to police stations and subjecting them there to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
It is also noteworthy that the authorities quickly identified the persons who threw stones at police officers and they have been in custody for several months and some of them have already been convicted, but for already 6 months the police officers who used violence against the protestors and put forward illegal demands are not identified.
Hovhannes Ghazaryan’s lawyer appealed the decisions on the extending the detention before the Court of Cassation and the rulings of the Court of Cassation are already available. The lawyer intends to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.