Imprisoned civic activist Garo Yeghnukian’s lawyer, Tigran Hayrapetyan qualifies police actions as a criminal activity for taking Yeghnukian’s wife, children and relatives to the police station. He insists that the incident should be accepted by the Special Investigation Service as a crime report, and proceedings must be instituted to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“The state is obliged to protect demonstration organizers, however it not only does not protect but also punishes the organizers, hinders the participants of the demonstration. This is a criminal offense, a crime report, and the SIS should institute criminal proceedings and bring the perpetrators to justice, since the participants of the demonstration taken to the police station were detained for five hours, the demonstration failed and their right to freedom of speech was violated.
In addition, law enforcement officials reported that they had received a call and had been informed that the demonstration participants had explosives and a bomb with them. If there was such a person who called the police and told such a thing, then that person must be detected and brought to justice for false testimony”, lawyer Tigran Hayrapetyan told Aravot.am, touching upon the case of taking civic activist Karo Yeghnukian’s wife, children and relatives to the police station.
Let us remind that the Yeghnukyans were taken to the police station for the distribution of leaflets about political prisoners in Armenia to the participants of the Armenia-Diaspora conference. Later, the Yeghnukians were released. There are still several supporters of Jirair Sefilian at the police station.
Arpine SIMONYAN
