Petrosyan wins lawsuit against Armenia in European Court of Human Rights
Strasbourg — Heghine Petrosyan, an Armenian citizen who was born in 1972 and lives in Hrazdan, Armenia, won a lawsuit against the Republic of Armenia at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
The case concerns the death of Ms Petrosyan’s 19-year-old son while being held in custody for
evasion of military service. The official version was that he had committed suicide in his cell.
The applicant’s son, H. Movsisyan, had been drafted into the Armenian army in June 2011 and
assigned to a military unit in Nagorno-Karabakh. Shortly after he was found unfit and discharged for
mental-health reasons. He was subsequently prosecuted and convicted for evasion of military
service. On November 28, 2012 he was found hanging from the bars of his cell window with his
bedsheet.
Three investigations were carried out. One internal investigation by the Nagorno-Karabakh police
concluded that “no breaches [of rights] had been discovered on the part of the prison officers”,
while two sets of criminal proceedings, by the Nagorno-Karabakh and then authorities in Armenia,
were terminated on the grounds that there was no evidence that a crime had been committed.
Ms Petrosyan appealed the decisions in her son’s case to the national courts, without success.
Relying on Articles 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights and 13 (right to an
effective remedy) of the European Convention, Ms Petroysan complained among other things, that
the authorities failed to provide a plausible explanation for the death of her son.
She argued in particular that they had failed to clarify how it had been possible for her son to commit suicide in the presence of six other detainees without them or the guards noticing. At the same time, she also
argued that the authorities failed to take steps to protect her son’s life, despite having been aware of
his mental-health issues.
The European Court found that the Republic of Armenia violated the court’s Article 2 (right to life) and
Article 13 (right to an effective remedy).
The Court ordered the government of Armenia to pay Ms. Petrosyan 50,000 euros.
