4
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
the parliament, and by parliamentary deputies failing
to focus sufficiently on the issue.
Ombudsperson
A further commitment on joining the Council of
Europe was to adopt, within six months of accession,
the law on the Ombudsperson. However, in March, the
deputy parliamentary speaker, Tigran Torosian, was
reported to have indicated in an interview with Hayots
Ashkhar newspaper that this timeframe was
problematic, and that parliament was seeking a delay
of six months starting from the completion of
constitutional reforms. Meanwhile, the Human Rights
Commission at the office of the President continued
its activities in monitoring human rights in Armenia,
including in the army and place of detention,
publishing its report for 2000 in March. Among other
issues, the report is said to have noted serious
shortcomings in observing the rights of citizens
dealing with law-enforcement bodies. The report is
said to have noted cases of people being arrested and
then tortured, and that conditions in penal colonies
were unsatisfactory.
Transfer of the penitentiary system
In March the head of the Department for
execution of
criminal punishments at the Ministry for Internal
Affairs announced that the prison system would be
transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the
Ministry of Justice in October this year, in line with
Armenia’s commitment to the Council of Europe. He
stated that currently, of the 15 existing prisons and
prison colonies in Armenia, only 12 are operational,
holding around 6,000 prisoners.
Amnesty
On 13 June, parliament adopted a Presidential decree
regarding an amnesty to mark the 1700
th
anniversary
of Armenia's adoption of Christianity as state religion.
Under the Armenian Constitution, the president has
the right to grant amnesty with the agreement of the
parliament.
The amnesty was reported to be due to run until
September 2001, affecting over 2,100 people, with
1,250 scheduled for release. The amnesty did not
extend to individuals who had been convicted of
murder or other serious crimes. Reportedly, for the
purposes of the amnesty, the definition of serious
crimes included the military crime of ‘desertion’, and
therefore many conscientious objectors would not
come under the terms of the amnesty (see above).
Prosecution of sexual minorities
In April, an adviser to the Armenian Minister of
Internal Affairs, Mikael Grigorian, is reported to have
stated that in 1999, 15 people were prosecuted under
the Armenian law which criminalizes homosexual
relations between men. Under the existing criminal
code in Armenia inherited from the Soviet era, Article
116 punishes ‘sodomy’, defined as ‘sexual relations of
a man with another man’. Part 1 of the article punishes
consenting sex between adult males by up to five
years’ imprisonment. Other parts of the article punish
consenting or non-consenting sex between two males
where one is a minor, and other non-consenting sex
between two males. It is not clear at present under
which part of the law the 15 men were prosecuted. The
new draft criminal code is said to abolish the
criminalization of consenting homosexual acts
between adult males. Pending the adoption of the new
code, AI has urged officials to initiate moves to repeal
Article 116 part 1, and not to pursue criminal
prosecutions of men for consenting same-sex relations
between adults in private.
The death penalty
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2001)
Though no execution has taken place in Armenia since
independence, courts continue to hand down death
sentences for particularly severe crimes. In March,
Armenia’s Court of Appeal, the highest criminal
justice court, upheld the death sentences passed on
Armen Ter-Saakian and Alik Grigorian. The two men
had been sentenced to death with confiscation of
property in July of last year in connection with the
murders, several years previously, of a number of
people regarded as opponents of those in power at the
time. In another case on 11 April, Vayotsdzorsky
Regional Court is reported to have sentenced
servicemen Tsolak Melkonyan, Levon Madilyan and
Artak Alekyan to death for killing eight people - a
three-year-old child, two traffic police, three soldiers
and two civilians - in July last year while deserting
from their army unit. The three men’s appeal was
heard on 12 June by the Court of Cassation. The
outcome of the hearing is not currently known to AI.
There are currently at least 30 people on the
country's only death row in Nubarashen prison, near
Yerevan. One of those individuals was reported to be
Artur Mkrtchian, a 24-year-old Armenian soldier
sentenced to death in 1996 for shooting five of his
comrades. During the period under review, AI
received a report of allegations that military police had
ill-treated Artur Mkrtchian's family while questioning
them as part of the investigation. The report alleged
further that his brother had been arrested and detained
for three months, during which time he was beaten and
tortured. There were also allegations of fair trial
violations during the trial of Artur Mkrtchian.
The case of Arkady Vartanian - concerns relating
to access to defence lawyer and family
In the period under review, AI raised with the
Armenian authorities its concerns relating to the case
of Arkady Vartanian, in particular allegations that his
arrest and detention had been politically motivated.
Arkady Vartanian had first been detained on 30
October 2000 following a demonstration he had