The 34-year-old man, Ara Ohanian, and his family are refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh living in Charentsavan, a small town 35 kilometers north of Yerevan. He worked in a local metallurgical plant along with his brother-in-law. The latter had his gold chain stolen in the plant’s locker room.
Ohanian was summoned to Charentsavan’s police department on December 4 in connection with the apparent theft. He claims that three police officers, including a deputy chief of the department, hit various parts of his body after he refused to admit stealing the chain.
“I said, ‘You can kill me, but I didn’t do that … I won’t answer for what I didn’t do,’” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Ohanian, who suffers from a serious liver disease, was rushed to a hospital in Yerevan following the interrogation. He said he lost his job as a result.
Speaking after being discharged from the hospital on Monday morning, Ohanian alleged that “two or three” other workers of the Charentsavan plant were also interrogated and tortured in police custody for the same reason. None of them has made such claims in public.
“Instead of solving the theft and finding the thief and the stolen item, the police officers decided to beat up every worker in order to blame the crime on someone,” charged Roman Yeritsian, Ohanian’s lawyer who was the first to publicize the alleged incident late last week.
A spokesperson for the Armenian Interior Ministry said Interior Minister Arpine Sargsian ordered an internal inquiry into the allegations. Ministry officials conducting the inquiry talked to Ohanian in the hospital over the weekend.
The Charentsavan policemen are not yet facing any criminal proceedings. Armenia’s Investigative Committee argued that it has not received a formal complaint from the Karabakh Armenian man or his lawyer.
Human rights groups say that ill-treatment of criminal suspects remains widespread in Armenia despite sweeping law-enforcement reforms promised by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government. Police officers are still rarely prosecuted or fired for such offenses.
The Patrol Service, a Western-funded police division set up in 2021 as part of the stated reforms, is also no stranger to torture allegations. In August this year, another Karabakh-born man claimed to have been beaten up by officers of the Patrol Service during an altercation in Yerevan. The Interior Ministry denied the claims.
The Charentsavan police station was the scene of one of the worst instances of torture ever reported in Armenia. In 2010, a 24-year-old local resident died several hours after he was detained, along with several other men, on suspicion of theft. According to prosecutors, he stabbed himself to death with a kitchen knife after being physically abused by a senior policeman. The latter was subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison.