Armenian authorities have detained a woman accused of assisting in organising an illegal migration network. Her eight-month-old daughter was also placed in her care in detention, as the father reportedly stated that he was unable to care for the infant.
The Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction gave Liana Harutyunyan, who has three children, three months of pre-trial detention on 11 July.
Harutyunyan’s lawyer, Zaruhi Postanjyan, said that her client had been providing interpretation services for three Indian nationals during their visits to various state agencies in Armenia.
Although she was initially questioned as a witness after the men were charged with illegal migration, her legal status was later changed to that of a defendant. Harutyunyan now faces charges of assisting in organising illegal migration.
According to Armenia’s criminal code, organising the illegal entry of foreign citizens into the country is punishable with a fine in the amount of ‘twenty to forty times the amount of the minimum wage’, short-term imprisonment for a term of up to two months, or by imprisonment for a term of one to four years.
Harutyunyan was initially placed under house arrest, however, on 11 July, citing her absence from a court session, the court decided to replace the existing measure with pre-trial detention.
Postanjyan told Factor TV that Harutyunyan did not attend the session because she was concerned about the performance of her court-appointed public defender. She declined their services and requested a new attorney. Preliminary court hearings had already started during this period, leaving Harutyunyan without any legal representation.
According to Postanjyan, her client contacted her on Friday morning to request legal assistance.
‘After hearing the decision, the defendant fainted; her condition deteriorated sharply’, the lawyer said, assessing the court’s decision as ‘unlawful’.
‘A mother of a breast[fed] baby cannot be detained on such grounds, and for three months at once’, Postanjyan said.
In a similar assessment human rights advocate Zara Hovhannisyan called the verdict as ‘absolutely unacceptable’ and ‘inhumane’, considering that she was a mother of an infant child.
‘Failure to appear at a single hearing cannot, in any way, serve as grounds for locking a mother along with her child in a penitentiary’.
In a separate post, Hovhannisyan also noted that freedom is a supreme value and ‘detention as a preventive measure should be used in extreme cases’.
Shortly after the arrest, the health state of the child reportedly deteriorated.
On Sunday, Postanjyan announced that during her visit to the penitentiary earlier that morning she found out that the infant had ‘insomnia throughout the night due to diarrhea’.
‘Liana Harutyunyan is deprived of the opportunity to wash the child with hot water in the prison cell, since the prison cell does not have hot water or a device that provides hot water’, Postanjyan claimed.
Additionally Postanjyan stated that the child was not examined by a pediatrician, and only the nurse of the penitentiary provided her with medical care.
The authorities dismissed Postanjyan’s claims regarding the lack of access to hot water and the condition of the cell and provided food, and additionally published photos of her cell.
They also noted that the child was undergoing examination at a civilian medical facility.
According to RFE/RL, Harutyunyan has maintained her innocence and lawyer Postanjyan has pledged to appeal the court’s decision on Monday. Meanwhile, opposition MPs announced their readiness to provide personal guarantees on Harutyunyan’s behalf.
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