Tigran Ulubabian, a 29-year-old refugee from Nagorno-Karabakh living in the northern city of Vanadzor, was summoned to the local police headquarters and questioned late last week in connection with an armed robbery of an apartment owned or rented by his relatives.
Ulubabian said on Monday that police officers tortured, intimidated and verbally abused him in a bid to force him to admit his involvement in the crime.
“I told them that I participated in three wars and am not afraid of anything,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “They had no evidence … The problem is not the beating. The problem is that they swore at me, and they must answer for that. I’m going to go the end.”
“I remember their faces and can recognize them one by one,” added the single man who has no parents and whose brother was killed in 2017 in fighting with Azerbaijani forces.
The Armenian police said the following morning that they have launched an internal inquiry into the torture allegations. None of the Vanadzor policemen involved in the interrogation was suspended as a result.
The Investigative Committee announced later in the day that it has opened a criminal case in response to Ulubabian’s allegations. The Karabakh Armenian man’s lawyer, Roman Yeritsian, was highly skeptical about the announced investigation, saying that it may well end in a coverup.
A similar probe was launched last month after several other Vanadzor residents suspected of another crime claimed to have been tortured by local policemen. None of those officers has been charged so far.
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.