Armenian police have been accused of assaulting, insulting, and pepper spraying a Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian whilst detaining him for a parking violation last week.
On 1 August, Roman Yeritsyan, a lawyer from Nagorno-Karabakh, published a video on Facebook stating that his brother, Aram Yeritsyan, was ‘severely beaten’ by 10 police officers as he was being detained. Yeritsyan has since published photos of injuries his brother received, stating that his brother sustained a broken hand, broken fingers, and head injuries.
In a statement issued the day following his arrest, the Interior Ministry dismissed Yeritsyan’s claims as ‘obvious lies and false information’. They denied that his brother was physically assaulted and accused him of attacking the arresting police officers and resisting arrest.
Later that day, Armenia’s Investigative Committee published a statement about Yeritsyan’s arrest, stating that he was arrested because he was acting suspiciously.
According to the Committee statement, two police officers were investigating an illegally parked car, which they believed was Yeritsyan’s. Yeritsyan was quoted as saying that he had not parked the car in that spot, and did not have its keys.
On searching Yeritsyan, police found the car keys and its registration papers on him, but the statement does not specify whether they had searched him before or after his arrest.
‘The patrol police officers suspected that the 27-year-old person was behaving suspiciously to avoid administrative responsibility and hide the fact that the car was his’, read the statement.
However, the Committee also noted that a second criminal proceeding was initiated on Friday, after a report that Yeritsyan was in fact injured by police during his arrest.
The Investigative Committee also published a video of the man’s arrest, in which two police officers are seen speaking to Yeritsyan. The footage, which contains no audio, shows Yeritsyan pulling away from a police officer reaching for his arm, after which the two police officers move to apprehend him. Yeritsyan is seen kicking one of the officers away and hitting him on the head, with the video ending with police dragging Yeritsyan out of frame.
In response, Roman Yeritsyan published bodycam footage from one of the arresting police officers, accusing the authorities of obfuscating evidence of his brother’s mistreatment.
In the footage, Aram Yeritsyan can be heard agreeing to go to the police station with the police officers, but refusing to be handcuffed, leading to his arrest. The lawyer accused the police of withholding the bodycam footage of the second arresting officer, which he believes would contain evidence of his brother’s abuse whilst in police custody.
Roman Yeritsyan has cited the second police officer as confirming that his body camera was on at the time of his brother’s arrest.
‘According to us, the reason for hiding the video recording is that it clearly shows what kind of insults are uttered against my brother and all the people of Artsakh, and also clearly shows what kind of violence is being used against my brother while taking him up the stairs to the second floor of the police department,’ he said.
Yeritsyan also claimed that the Investigative Committee request for his brother’s arrest was rejected by the court, and the arrest was recognised as illegal.
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