Armenia’s human rights ombudsman, Armen Harutiunian, said on Thursday that he is
receiving growing complaints from citizens claiming to have been intimidated and
mistreated by law-enforcement agencies to give false incriminating testimony
against arrested opposition members.

“We can’t say whether or not that is true,” he told RFE/RL. “But the fact is
that such complaints have increased.”

Harutiunian said he has sent letters to the chiefs of the Armenian police and
the Special Investigative Service (SIS) to investigate the claims and, in
particular, to look into the case of one man, identified as Gagik Avdalian.

In a letter to the ombudsman, Avdalian claimed that he went into hiding after
being tortured to testify against parliament deputy Miasnik Malkhasian and
several other oppositionists arrested in connection with the March 1 clashes in
Yerevan between opposition protesters and security forces. He said local courts
should therefore not use the testimony as evidence.

Under Armenian law, the police and SIS chiefs have to reply to Harutiunian
within 10 days.

Harutiunian’s letter is the latest example of the human rights defender of
questioning the legality of the Armenian authorities’ post-election crackdown on
the opposition that followed the March 1 unrest. His criticism of the use of
lethal force against opposition protesters was rejected by Prosecutor-General
Aghvan Hovsepian and other Armenian officials.

Earlier this month, Harutiunian described as illegal SIS chief Andranik
Mirzoyan’s March directive to regional prosecutors to round up participants of
the opposition rallies in Yerevan, wire-tap their conversations and interrogate
their neighbors. Mirzoyan insists that the order was legal and justified.

Harutiunian said he shared his concerns with the visiting president of the
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Lluis Maria de Puig, at a meeting
earlier on Thursday. “[De Puig] noted that not everyone in Armenia understands
the gravity of the situation,” he said.