Published since 07.2002
Published on April 11, 2008
LAW OR POLITICS?: ANM BRANCH CHAIRMAN FACES SERVING SARGSYAN’S TERM IN PRISON
- The chairman of the Vanadzor’s council of the Armenian All-National Movement (HHsh) arrested in the morning on March 1 in Yerevan may face 5 years imprisonment for “organizing illegal public events and encroachments and violence against police officer”. Rubik Voskanyan 49 waits for the court decision in Nubarashen penitentiary in Yerevan.Armine Martirosyan, his wife, says the dried blood of her husband still stains the clothes she brought back from the prison after he was arrested. Says she will use the clothes as evidence in his court trial that Voskanyan was beaten into submission. Voskanayn was an active participant of opposition rallies and after the elections he spent most of his time at Liberty Square, in support of his party leader, Levon Ter-Petrosyan. He disappeared after the March 1 crackdown on rally participants in the Opera square in Yerevan and neither the friends nor the family had heard about him for several days. “He was unreachable when we called on his cell phone in the morning,” his daughter Christine says. Rights activist in Vanadzor Artur Sakunts was the first to learn about Voskanyan’s place. He had appealed to the office of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia to identify Voskanyan’s place. Sakunts was told the man was held at the Kentron community police department in Yerevan. “The law provides he could be held there for 72 hours, but instead he was illegally kept in custody for 4 days without a notification to the family,” says Sakunts. “I went to the police three times, but they would say there was no such person there,” say Voskanyan’s wife. “He was in a bad health condition that is why they concealed his place to keep us from seeing him in that condition.” Armine Martirosyan managed to see her husband several days later in one of the prosecutor general’s offices in Yerevan. The investigator into his case let her see him for several minutes but they did not speak. She says the investigator knew she would complain if she saw her husband closely, would complain of his beaten look: “his hair, the blood coagulated on his head; although the bandage was taken away, it’s all the same, I could see he was not ill, but beaten.” Witnesses say Voskanyan was beaten in Liberty Square, when he was still asleep in the tent called ‘Vanadzor’. He was awakened by the police truncheon blow and had managed to run away. The truncheon hit his head, ears and feet. Witnesses say he was heavily injured and, he, supported by his friend Ashot Manukyan, the head of the party Lori province body, escaped to the area in the neighborhood of the Yerevan Circus. The witnesses from Vanadzor say a friend made an attempt to stop an ambulance, but special detachment forces came out of it and took both of them. The International Red Cross rendered medical aid to Voskanyan for several times so that he looked better on his wife Armine’s second visit. She says her husband remains resolved in his political struggle. The charges carry penalties from fines to five years of imprisonment for Voskanyan’s crimes. “But what for?” asks the wife. “It was he who underwent beatings; he has not beaten up a police officer.” Police officer Erik Poghosyan insisted on the opposite during the preliminary investigation: “he hit and wrestled with the police officers on duty.” Mesrop Zakaryan, a Vanadzor resident and Voskanyan’s friend also witnessed that Voskanyan beat a policeman. But Armine says friends have testified against each other under the threat of beatings and pressure. Voskanyan has confessed he both beat the police officers and also distributed money to the residents of Vanadzor for staying at the Liberty Square and promised shops in the center of Yerevan in case Ter-Petrosyan became president. But Voskanyan told his family it was impossible to beat police officers because they were armed and protected with shields, so resisting them was impossible. “If an injured person has been brought to a condition when he testifies against himself, then what else to expect from these authorities?” the wife says. The anxiously protesting wife hired a lawyer more than three weeks ago, but he is not allowed to visit his defendant. “The RA Constitution provides that any citizen has the right for legal services and also a lawyer in any condition – whether in prison or in freedom,” says member of the Lawyers’ Union of Armenia, lawyer Karen Tumanyan. There are two more Vanadzor residents arrested like Voskanyan. One of them Ashot Manukyan, who helped Voskanyan escape the Liberty Square, is also in Nubarashen penitentiary institution. He is charged for mass disturbances and violence against the representative of authorities.
- Naira Bulghadaryan
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Today in Armenian history- 1806 Birth of educator and literary figure Ruben Papazyan in Constantinople. He died in 1857 in Smyrna.
- 1865 Birth of poet, translator Alexander Tsatooryan.
- 1879 The Azgaser Union is created in Constantinople.
- 1915 Start of the 11-day defense of the Armenian town of Taron (Western Armenia).
- 1919 Having been found guilty of serious crimes in the Genocide of the Armenians of Yozghat, Kemal Bay was hung in Constantinople's Sultan Bayazet square. He was the deputy governor of Yozgat.
- 2001 Armenian Genocide Heirs Settle New York Life Insurance Company Class-Action Lawsuit concerning policy holders who were victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
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