The Constitutional Court left for the conference room to make a decision on the application of the “Asparez” club president Levon Barseghyan. Chairman of the Constitutional Court Gagik Harutyunyan informed that they would be additionally informed about the time of publication of the decision.
Let us remind that Levon Barseghyan and his representative in the court, MP, human rights defender Artak Zeynalyan disputed the discrepancy between the legislative norms of violation of the right to personal immunity and personal liberty and the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.
On September 21, 2011, on the 20th anniversary of the Republic of Armenia Independence Day, Levon Barseghyan was arrested and kept in the police station for three hours. He was set free only after the military parade. The violation of Levon Barseghyan’s right to free speech and freedom of movement was also recorded by the Administrative Court, which obliged the police to pay for judicial expenses. This was a precedential decision, but Levon Barseghyan demands compensation for moral damage.
“I had promised they wouldn’t get off cheap”, Levon Barseghyan told Aravot.am. According to him, as compensation for moral damage the sum he demands is based on analogous precedents of the European Court of Human Rights: “A million drams per moral damage and judicial expenses. The court had decided that the compensation should be 200,000 and 300,000 drams, appeals to the Court of Appeal and Cassation. But the court has decided that a citizen can be illegally taken to a police station, kept for three hours and compensated by only 200,000 and 300,000 drams”.
According to our interlocutor, several hundred people have been illegally detained by the police over the past years, but many have never taken the chance to protest the actions of the police. “This is a battle of dignity. They were humanly asked for letting us do our protest picket, and the deputy head of the Police Centre told me that they recommended us from above it would be better not to take this protest march”.
Arpine SIMONYAN
