300 people were detained illegally

"I am officially announcing that no investigator obliges a person in the police custody to refuse from  an advocate's service", today said the head of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of RA Police, a police colonel A. Kirakosyan during the presentation of 2009 annual report of the  public monitoring group in RA Police custody.

Kirakosyan's announcement was the response to the head of HCA Vanadzor, Artur Sakunts' comment, that it was evident from the annual report that the advocate's offices are not active in the regions, and that the reason is not only the issue of quality advocates, but also the fact that investigators oblige or persuade the person in custody to refuse from an advocate's service saying it will be better in the future.

Returning to the shortcomings in the annual report, advocate Artak Zeynalyan said that the monitoring group had been created as a result of the obligations taken in the Council of Europe in the framework of UNDP and they shouldn't consult with the police and present a joint report.

Zeynalyan said that the report would be used while sending cases against RA to the European Court: “We inherited detention facilities with unfavourable conditions and ill-treatment from the Soviet time. If a person is in the police custody for more than 72 hours without any grounds, then there are problems related to the violation of his/her rights, that is to say, there is  violation of the 3rd article of the European Convention”.

In the annual report the monitoring group has recorded 300 cases of unlawful detention of a person in the police station.

Although the head of the monitoring group, Suren Iskandaryan, insisted that  all the 300 cases in the report are real, police colonel Karen Mehrabyan, deputy  head of RA Police department responsible for ensuring public order, objected, mentioning that “there  haven't been such 300 cases, as according to the Criminal Procedure Code, a person can be kept in the police station for three days, and for instance, bringing a person  from Nubarashen to Vardenis takes a long time, besides that's difficult for a person, it's much better to keep a person for one day more than torture him/her by bringing and taking back.

In connection with this, Artur Sakunts reminded the police colonel about Mher Harutyunyan from Gugark who had been kept in the police station for 14 hours and was not arrested. Moreover, according to him,even the imprisoned didn't show the representatives of the monitoring group the copy of the protocol of the arrest as they had not been provided with it.

While presenting the report Iskandaryan said that in 2009 there were no cases of tortures in police custody, and if there were such 3 or 4 cases, then they were “due to negligence, which the law does not consider violation”.

Talking about tortures, Artur Sakunts reminded that only in 2009 there were 38 cases in Lori region, when  the tortured person was taken to a detention facility from the police custody,  and in spite of complaints no objective and serious investigation was held.

Iskandaryan also talked about deliveries, visits, even food (450 drams is foreseen per person for feeding 3 times a day), about problems related to utensils, and repair of buildings mentioning that in the annual report  the monitoring group has made recommendations to solve the situation.

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