Person who reported on violence by the police gets calls from unidentifiable phone numbers and is urged not to complain
15:44, May 26, 2017 | News, Own news | Police
In April, A. H. from Stepanavan town turned to Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor saying that 5 months before on his way home from his friend’s place accompanied by the latter, some 10 police officers came up to them and arrested him threatening him with a handgun.
At Stepanavan police station, he suffered beating and was forced by threats to testify against his friend. The police officers carried on using violence and showing degrading treatment in the subsequent hours, including during the talk with the chief of police in his room; by the way, according to A. H., the chief of police had on civilian clothes.
After the incident, A. H. left for Nagorno-Karabakh to avoid any further persecution and learnt there about detention of his friend G. K. against whom he was forced to testify. Then he decided to go back and tell about the incident.
HCA Vanadzor applied to the RA Prosecutor General’s Office to initiate criminal proceedings on the said incident and prosecute the offender. G. K. also filed a crime report on the same incident.
Later, the RA Special Investigation Service declared A. H. victim under the initiated criminal proceedings.
After the initiation of the criminal proceedings, A. H. gets regular calls from unidentifiable phone numbers accompanied with threats and swear words and is urged not to complain, so that the proceedings are closed.
Considering that A. H. has information about the crime and therefore the threats may continue and lead to infringement on A. H.’s life and health, his representative Ani Chatinyan, lawyer at HCA Vanadzor, motioned to take measures to protect him and start examination to identify the persons who made those phone calls.
Note that the RA Criminal Procedure Code provides for the right to protection of a party to the proceedings who has information necessary to detect the crime and identify the offender, if his/her life, health, property, rights and legal interests are threatened.
However, the body in charge of the proceedings sees no danger in the suspicious phone calls and insists that the stranger’s calls and swear words give no sufficient grounds to conclude that A. H.’s life might be threatened or he might be attacked.
In its response, the RA Special Investigation Service made no mention at all of the victim’s representative’s demand to prosecute the persons who made the phone calls.