Father of Three Underage Children Aram Sargsyan Has Been Illegally Detained for 20 Days: Defender

The defender of Aram Sargsyan, who has been detained in connection with the 'Gagik Soghomonyan' case, Benik Galstyan, posted on his Facebook page:

“In recent days, there has been much discussion about the extreme illegality and absurdity of the charges and, moreover, the detention of Aram Sargsyan, the father of three underage children, in the Gagik Soghomonyan case. As rightfully noted by one of my esteemed colleagues, the accusations against Aram Sargsyan are, by their nature and essence, official forgery, not criminal procedural documents. However, the actions taken against Aram Sargsyan, as well as all those not executed within the scope of this criminal proceedings, are terrifying, illegal, and illogical.

Let us set aside the fact that Aram’s three children have been prohibited from visiting their father, as well as the apparent facts regarding the order given by the chairman of the Yerevan city court, Arthur Mkrtchyan, to detain Aram at all costs, for which a criminal proceeding is currently being conducted by the Special Investigative Service of the Republic of Armenia.

Aram Sargsyan is the only accused in this case whose apartment and car have not been searched, and all electronic devices in his home have not been seized. It seems that the NSS’s objective was to quickly isolate Aram. The only logical explanation for this legal disgrace is that the NSS employees thought that Aram had authored the post made by their leader regarding Gagik Soghomonyan on February 19 at 20:42 and decided to hastily arrest and detain Aram without having time to perform the other actions.

However, later neither the NSS officers 'dared' to report to their leader that they had arrested the wrong person, considering that Aram connected to IP 178.17.168.170 six minutes later, at 20:48, nor did the judge Vahagn Melikyan, who ordered the detention of Aram, have the 'courage' to inform the chairman of the court, Arthur Mkrtchyan, about this. As a result, Aram Sargsyan has been illegally detained for 20 days now.”