Chairman of Armenian Helsinki Committee Avetik Ishkhanyan, being a member of the public monitoring group of RA MJ penitentiary institutions has many times participated in conducting public monitoring at the penitentiary institutions of Armenia. Today, he attended the presentation of 2012 annual report of the public monitoring group conducting monitoring at the Police Detention Facilities (PDF). To remind that those convicted in prison by the court verdict are kept in penitentiary institutions, and those not yet convicted, detained or arrested are kept in PDFs. To the question of “Aravot.am” as to what has changed over the years in detention facilities, first of all for clarification Mr. Ishkhanyan noted that he had not participated in the activities of the group conducting public monitoring in PDFs but he was presenting the reports of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) regarding the problems available in our police system, and right from the CPT report he became aware of the problems available in the PDFs.
Accordingly, Mr. Ishkhanyan considered negligence of international principles subject to mandatory execution by Armenia problematic. “As a rule, the three most important principles of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture are not maintained, which are as follows: from the moment of its actual apprehended, the detained person is entitled to have three most important rights: to inform the third person or his folks about his whereabouts, to have a lawyer, and to use medical services, if necessary. Why do I emphasize from the moment of actual apprehended, because the person from the moment of invited to the police station, is actually in apprehended, even if he is not arrested or detained.”
Mr. Ishkhanyan says that, as a rule, our citizens do not use these three indisputable rights. “The man can be found in the police station without knowing his status, he can be moved from one room to another, be beaten by five or six people, be broken, if he asks for an attorney, he will be laughed at, they may say why do you need a lawyer, and put him into a situation that he will sign what they want, and, afterwards, the arrest will be made. This is a defective practice; the ways to change it are not still noticed.”
Melania BARSEGHYAN
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