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who does this; and what the fukc is the purpose?
Armenia to Pay Its First Monetary Compensation to a Citizen
European Court Declares Violation of Legal Rights by State Courts
[July 9, 2007]
On June 28, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued its first verdict against the Republic of Armenia, which included a fine of 4,000 Euros. This amount is to be paid by the State to plaintiff Misha Harutyunyan within three months. Lawyer Hayk Alumyan had presented the case to the European Court in 2003, basing it on a series of violations. The European Court recognized that the first point of Article 6 in the European Convention - the right to a fair trial - had been violated in the case of Misha Harutyunyan, for which he had to be paid 4,000 Euros in moral damages. The lawyer stated that the European Court had not discussed the matter of torture used against the plaintiff, because Misha Harutyunyan had been tortured before Armenia had signed the European Convention. The Court had ruled on whether or not the Armenian courts had the right to use testimony gained through torture against Harutyunyan and convict him the verdict stated that this was against Armenia's commitment to the Convention. All the violations that were presented to the European Court had earlier also been presented to the Court of Cassation in Armenia, said Hayk Alumyan in a conversation with us.
The events unfolded in 1998, when the dead body of a soldier serving near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border was found in the trenches. The military police arrested five conscripts. Hayk Alumyan, the defense attorney for one of them, Misha Harutyunyan, said that all the evidence pointed to a sniper shot from behind enemy lines being the cause of the soldier's death, because there had been an alert in the same area earlier and everyone had been warned not to leave their trenches.
However, the forensics expert involved in the case surprised everyone by saying that the soldier had not been fired at from a long distance, but had rather been shot from around 1-10 meters away. This conclusion allowed the military police to dismiss the version that the enemy had killed the soldier and to search for the killer among the conscripts serving with the victim. The defense managed to uncover the background of the forensics expert only later he turned out to be a drug analysis specialist with a background in botany. However, his testimony was the only expert evidence used at the time. The five conscripts arrested were taken to military police headquarters and tortured. According to the lawyer, besides the usual methods of torture, the military police had also put pressure on the fingernails using a switch and thus tried to find out which of the five had committed the murder.
Two of the conscripts created alibis for themselves and claimed that they had gone to the adjacent unit to buy cigarettes; they were later convicted of leaving their unit without permission. Two of the remaining three had been together throughout, and when they were tortured they were asked if they committed the murder together or if they saw whether it had been Misha Harutyunyan, since he would have been in their field of vision had he been the murderer. They used the testimony of these two conscripts, obtained under torture, that the third - Misha Harutyunyan was the killer and then forced Misha to confess, said defense attorney Alumyan. According to him, Harutyunyan persevered for one month against the torture applied and refused to testify. After that he was told that he would be tried for murder anyway, but if he confessed, he would be charged with manslaughter instead, rather than murder in cold blood.
We were successful in proving that Misha and the other two witnesses had been tortured and got expert opinion that Misha's wounds were the result of pressure using a blunt instrument all ten fingernails on his hands were black, said the lawyer. On the basis of this evidence, four military workers were convicted of forcing testimony from the three conscripts through torture.
However, that did not prevent the Syunik Provincial Court of First Instance from convicting Misha Harutyunyan and sentencing him to 13 years in prison. After the four military workers were convicted, Judge Lernik Atanyan could not deny that illegal methods had been used in gaining evidence from the conscripts and wrote the following in his verdict Although the pre-trial period has seen the use of violence, this was done with the purpose of discovering the truth.
During the long years of this legal process, the defense had been successful in having the criminal case appealed and reviewed on three occasions, but each time the military prosecutor would make a few cosmetic changes to the case and file it again. On the last occasion, no effort was spared to get a conviction. The Courts of Appeal and Cassation left the verdict unchanged, but slightly reduced the sentence to 10 years imprisonment. This means that the judges reviewing the case knew that Misha Harutyunyan did not commit murder, but if they had overturned the verdict, it would mean having to find the real murderer. That is why our courts upheld the conviction to help the prosecutor but decided on milder punishment, knowing that the accused was innocent, added Hayk Alumyan.
Thus, after four and a half years in prison, Misha Harutyunyan was freed, though he was stuck with the label of a murderer and after already having served two-thirds of his punishment.
Based on the decision by the European Court, the Armenian courts will now have to review the verdict they had passed against Misha Harutyunyan. How will they treat the judges because of whom Harutyunyan suffered? Now he will be compensated with money obtained from the Armenian taxpayer. Alumyan stated that the Civil Code permits retrospective cases, which would allow the government to find the judge who is to blame and force him to pay the penalty.
Sara Petrosyan
what would we do if you're not? 
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