Паст инфо

The monitoring group carrying out supervision in the RA Police Detention Facilities was established in 2006 and operates since then.

The Head of the monitoring group answers to the questions of ‘Pastinfo.am’.

-In this period of time, what is the biggest achievement that you can indicate?

- There are definitely a lot of achievements, but I would indicate several. For instance, there were many cases when the imprisoned were kept in the initial place of detention 72 days instead of 72 hours.

In 2008 the term became 54 days, in 2009 the arrested would be preserved for maximum 27 days, and today we have achieved that there are no cases of keeping the arrested for more than 72 hours which is under the law. This is only about one achievement.

- Who are the monitoring group members?

- The representatives of 12 social human rights organizations are included in the group. Any member of the group has the power to exercise the mission of observation in the scope of the competences vested by the Head of Police.

- Do you manage to fully use your competences? Do the police divisions create obstacles for your work?

- When I look back and remember what we had to go through…And now any obstacle can cause real problems for the Police officers.

When we started our activities in 2006 the police officers had no idea who the observer is and what his rights are due to the customs developed during 70 years of the Soviet Union. Now, thank God, there is no one, who would be unaware of the rights and powers of the members of the monitoring group.

-What rights does the monitoring group member have?

-Every member has the right to talk to the prisoners in detention places in private, without the intervention of policemen, get familiarized with the materials without any hindrance and examine the sanitary conditions of the detention place.

- What violations have you recorded in 2012 left from the previous years?

-Within one year we are having 4500 people in average kept in detention places. Around 60 % of them are prisoners. The arrested make a smaller percentage. There are many issues here as well. For instance, if the people in the penitentiary institutions have the right to communicate, watch TV, give press conferences, then in the detention places people are deprived of that right. It happens that they are kept there for many days as a result of postponing the court session, which is a violation of the law.

Enormous expenses are made to transport the arrested from the penitentiary institutions to the regional courts to let them participate in the court sessions. However, the research shows that there are many cases when after transporting the arrested to the regional court it turns up that the court session is postponed.

According to the law the arrested has to be returned from the regional court to the penitentiary institution which is an unnecessary expense. There were cases when the arrested was transported from the ‘Noubarashen’ penitentiary institution to the regional court 8 times, which we do not consider as normal. This is a process done by the state budget resources, which needs to be organized in a more efficient way. It is not the only problem, but it is one of those serious issues the solution of which is important. Our monitoring group does its best through insistent work in order to protect the fundamental rights of the people kept in detention places.