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A series of processes in the RA are facilitated either by non-existent or dead persons. Such processes include elections: presidential, local, etc. This article will feature other processes, namely investigative activities, facilitated by non-existent persons. There are a series of well-known and unknown cases with non-existent persons or persons, who could never guess that they were involved in cases as attesting witnesses and their signatures, in a capacity of attesting witnesses, were put under the investigators’ protocols.

Such cases include the cases of Vardan Petrosyan, Artak Nazaryan, Robert Hovsepyan, Ara Dilanyan and Khachik Hakobyan. Some of the attesting witnesses in some cases were non-existent persons; some of them did not take part in any of the investigative activities, and the others were unaware that they acted as attesting witnesses.

This problem is systemic in nature, as the cases presented and to be presented occurred at the police stations in various regions /marzes/ of the RA Police rather than at one single police station or at one single marz.

Hence, we hereby describe the cases of violation of the rights of 2 citizens who applied to the HCA Vanadzor in terms of investigative activities with unknown attesting witnesses.

The HCA Vanadzor submitted crime reports to V. Shahinyan, Head of the RA Special Investigation Service (SIS).

In the first case, T. Tadevosyan, Investigator at the Taron Investigatory Division of the Lori Region Investigatory Department, RA Police General Investigatory Department, searched a citizen’s garage on March 17, 2014 and according to the latter, there were no attesting witnesses and the investigator signed on their behalf; moreover, there are no persons with such names and surnames in the RA.

As for the second case, i.e. the protocol on search and seizure of CDs on May 7, 2012 and the protocol of inspecting the identification documents on April 27, 2012 by S. Mkhitaryan, Senior Investigator at the Lori Region Investigatory Department, RA Police General Investigatory Department, one of the attesting witnesses who signed the protocols above was a police officer at the Lori Region Investigatory Department, RA Police General Investigatory Department. Within the case of the same citizen, another search of CDs was conducted on May 15, 2012, “in the presence” of 2 attesting witnesses. As revealed later, one of them was informed about his/her being involved in the case as an attesting witness only by the citizen who applied to the HCA Vanadzor.

The RA Special Investigation Service instigated a criminal case over the first case, started proceedings on the crime report and launched preliminary investigation.

As for the second case, A. Minasyan, Senior Investigator for high-profile cases at the RA SIS, found that the actions of S. Mkhitaryan, Senior Investigator at the Lori Region Investigatory Department, RA Police General Investigatory Department lacked any elements of crime and therefore decreed to dismiss instigating criminal proceedings.

The RA Law on Attesting Witnesses states that attesting witnesses are adult citizens of the Republic of Armenia who have no interest in the criminal case, invited by the criminal prosecution body to take part in the investigative activity in order to attest to the fact of its completion as well as it contents, process and outcomes.

None of the cases above followed this clause of the law, and none of the investigators was punished for the offense.

The institute of attesting witnesses is of great importance for the citizens’ direct participation in the administration of justice. However, it follows from the above that the illegal practices attempt to diminish this participatory process as well.