The representative of the victim charged the Court of Appeals with prejudice.
The Court of Appeals heard on appeal the case of the murder of Sargis Sahakyan November 7, 2014.
Let us mention that during the original trial at the Court of First Instance the aggrieved party and the prosecution presented facts which showed that Sargis Sahakyan was in fact murdered. They charged that the preliminary investigative body carried out an inadequate investigation and presented the case in court as a suicide.
Peace Dialogue NGO has referred to the details of this and other trials like it many times. The aggrieved party presented evidence which was obtained from the testimonies of witnesses Tadevosyan and Margaryan. These testimonies provided evidence of crimes within the Military Prosecution- RA Ministry of Defense and Investigative Service- RA MoD Military Police systems.
It is quite interesting, that these materials, which contain reports of crimes being committed, were not discussed by the court, the RA Special Investigative Service, or by the General Prosecutor’s office or General Prosecutor.
In Kentron district Court the aggrieved party attempted to dispute the inaction of the abovementioned bodies; however Judge M. Martirosyan, decided that the aggrieved party’s appeal was “ungrounded”. According to Peace Dialogue NGO’s criminal expert Ruben Martirosyan, so far this case has been handled in a shameful way. When there is a report of crimes being committed by state bodies that claim illegality showed be investigated; however in this case, all the state bodies refused to even consider these reports.
Referring to the mentioned trial, R. Martirosyan, who acted as the representative of the aggrieved party’s successor, in the beginning of the trial challenged the court including Judges Karine Ghazaryan, Henrik Adamyan and Grisha Melik-Sargsyan. He justified his challenge with the following: the court with the mentioned members had made illegal and unjustified decisions in the following cases:
- Artak Nazaryan’s murder case (Died on 27.07.2010)
- Torgom Sarukhanyan’s murder case. He died on 12.02.2011 (it is worth mentioning that these two cases and S. Sahakyan’s case were unlawfully qualified as suicide by the preliminary investigative body
- Albert Adibekyan’s murder case (died on 23.02.2012)
According to R. Martirosyan’s statement which is based on verifiable facts, false charges were brought against Ignat Yengibaryan from the City of Hrazdan and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing A. Adibekyan.
All these unlawful cases were “adjudicated” by the abovementioned three persons: for each case the judge of the trial was one of these three. In his speech regarding the challenge Martirosyan drew particular attention to the proceedings of all three cases. Further, he challenged these judges who made a decision on hearing the case under cassation regime. This regime allows the Court of Appeals to take on the function of the Court of Cassation which assumes that an objective and thorough investigation was carried out during the preliminary investigation and at the Court of First Instance and there is no need to question more witnesses or additionally examine the evidence!.
Using this regime, the witnesses and the parties do not have any additional opportunity to testify. According to our expert, each of these verdicts regarding the aforementioned cases is absolutely unlawful and just proved that the court was following an order not providing justice.
R. Martirosyan justified his challenge by the fact that while taking the proceedings of S. Sahakyan’s case, again there was a decision to investigate it under cassation regime only. Once again this brings up suspicion that the trio of judges is again following an order and will, by all means, try to conceal the preliminary investigative body’s illegalities, as well as the unlawful verdict made by Judge of the Court of First Instance Napoleon Ohanyan.
R. Martirosyan reminds us that based on the unlawful verdicts made by these judges, through three previous cases nine innocent soldiers have already been sentenced to imprisonment. He announced that he will do everything in his power to prevent two other soldiers Khachatryan and Misakyan, who are charged with S. Sahakyan’s murder, from having the same fate.
The Court went on to discuss the challenge in the consultative room. An important incident happened before that: witness Lieutenant Gor Margaryan announced that he wished to testify and present new and important facts.
“This incident, just like my speech and challenge, obviously scared the Court and after returning from the consultative room the Judge announced that he rejected the motion for a challenge and that I am just spreading false rumors.”- said R. Martirosyan.
After this rejection, the Judge announced that there was a misunderstanding and that “they were not given an opportunity or they were deprived of an opportunity to think carefully” over the fact that they were not allowed to start the trial since there was a violation of law: one (currently presenting as a witness) of the three former detainees who had been charged within another case trial and then were granted amnesty and released, did not show up at court. On this basis, the court interrupted the trial and announced that the next trial will be held on November 28, at 12:30 o’clock. It is not clear what this means for this case. It is our hope that they will vacate the judgment completely and order a new and more thorough trial. We certainly owe this to our soldiers in arms.
Posted 25 November, 2014
