Sakunts Responded to Pashinyan

During the interview at henaran.am, Artur Sakunts - human rights defender and the head of the observation group implementing monitoring (public control) at penitentiary departments, mentioned, “It is a brazen violation of rights of the advocate and the defendant, since a meeting with the advocate should be confidential.

Thus, no third person has the right to be present during the meeting held between the client and the advocate”, by referring to yesterday’s statement made by head editor of the Armenian Time daily.

It is worth mentioning that yesterday Nikol Pashinyan stated that “Artik” Penitentiary staff and RA Ministry of Justice Penitentiary Department don’t provide an opportunity to apply his right and freedom stipulated by the Constitution. Penitentiary Department administration didn’t allow the editor to meet with his advocate Vahe Grigoryan in person. In addition, Nikol Pashinyan mentioned that he was deprived of epistolary correspondence with outside world. “Correspondence with outside world is terminated based on the interrogator’s decision, not just arbitrary, whatever is happening to Nikol Pashinyan is inevitably a violation of his rights by Penitentiary Department”, continues Artur Sakunts in his interview at henaran.am.

“As we have been informed, the group members implementing public control at Penitentiary Departments don’t have entry certificates, therefore, they cannot visit “Artik” Penitentiary and study the case on site. We had a meeting in the Penitentiary Administration regarding this issue and found out that it should be issued based on the Minster’s order”.  “The Minister hasn’t issued the order, it has been extended”, mentioned Artur Sankunts and added that a supplementary letter has been sent to Gevorg Malkhasyan - Deputy to Minister of Justice- with regard to providing  entry certificates to Penitentiary  Department and extending the certificate dates.

”In fact, because of the procedural relations between the Ministry of Justice and Penitentiary Department, we cannot get the certificates”, stated the human rights defender.

To the question, if there is a deliberation in all this, posed by Henaran.am, Artur Sakunts responded that he will abstain from making comments, as there are really some technical issues at this point: the previous group members were granted with certificates for a 5-year term and the term has expired, while the Ministry is obliged to issue the order for new group members on December 25.

“Unless the term is re-extended after December 25, I’ll make further comments”, added the human rights defender.

It is worth mentioning that the 9 members of the group are deprived of the chance to enter the Penitentiary without those certificates.

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