"Prisons are overcrowded, conditions do not satisfy human conditions and come within article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European Convention of Human Rights", says attorney-expert Artak Zeynalyan. The convention reads: "No one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

Arthur Sakunts, head of the Group of Public Observers of Penitentiary Institutions, has also many times raised the alarm about overcrowding and inhuman conditions in prisons. In one of his press conferences he even called on the convicted to institute legal proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the Republic of Armenia for keeping them in inhuman conditions. The human right activist believes that the increase of death rate in penitentiaries is connected with health problems due to bad conditions. According to Sakunts, 35 convicts died in prisons in 2010 against 7 in 2009.

Attorney Hayk Alumyan says that the cases when a convict needs urgent medical intervention in a penitentiary but does not get it can also be considered as torture.   

Prisoners in Armenia have no ability to judicially contest issues of impossibility of serving the sentences due to inadequacy of conditions of their keeping to the minimum standards or their illness, expert Artak Zeynalyan says adding that the above issues were raised also due to verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights.

He proposes to legislatively stipulate procedures for solving disputes rising during the imprisonment of the convicts (including disputes connected with the release from prison due to existence of illnesses incompatibility with prison conditions).

Verdicts against Armenia

There is no statistics on the number of cases on Article 3 of the Convention sent to the ECHR from Armenia but there is statistics about the verdicts against the RA on the same article. The research "The Process of Implementation of the European Court of Human Rights Verdicts in Armenia: Problems and Peculiarities of their Implementation in Armenia" authored by three lawyers presents 4 such cases.  

Three of the cases concerned illegal detainment of three villagers (who in 2003 participated in the opposition demonstration) and putting them under 10 day administrative arrest. The villagers were kept at the Armavir police temporary detention cell. ECHR decided that Article 3 of the Convention was violated since the detention conditions were equivalent to inhuman treatment.

"The Court has decided that taking into consideration the general effect of detention conditions, difficulties experienced by the detained person, sufferings and feelings of insult and humiliation caused by it have undoubtedly surpassed the minimum allowable limits by which detention conditions can inevitably have negative effect on both mental and physical well-being of the person", the ECHR verdict reads.

The RA Government responded to the European Court inquiry that by the President's order of December 2004, large-scale renovation projects works were implemented in all penitentiaries; also in July 2005 the RA Law on Keeping Arrested and Detained Persons was amended due to which the area for keeping arrested persons in police departments was increased up to 4 square meters.          

Is Overcrowding Torture?

Another complaint will add to the ones sent to ECHR on Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Attorney Hayk Alumyan is going to send a complaint to ECHR in Tigran Postanjyan's case that will also include the circumstance of inhuman conditions of prison Postanjyan was kept in.

It is worth reminding that Tigran Postanjyan went on hunger strike and complained against inhuman conditions of his cell at the Nubarashen penitentiary where 19 prisoners are kept in a 19 square meter cell. The cell lacks elementary living conditions - air ventilation, sleeping places etc.

Whereas the RA Constitution stipulates that "the size of the area for arrested or detained persons shall not be less than 2.5 square meters per person. Arrested and detained persons shall be provided with an individual sleeping place and bedding (RA Law on Keeping Arrested and Detained Persons, Article 20).

T.Postanjyan's sister, deputy Zaruhy Postanjyan, claims in her announcements that the conditions her brother is kept in are equivalent to torture, and that a similar verdict was adopted by ECHR in 2002 in the "Kalashnikov v. Russia" case.

However, attorney Hayk Alumyan considers these announcements of overcrowding reaching the level of torture as "populist".  

"The European Court of Human Rights in its verdict for the case "Kalashnikov v. Russia" found that Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights was violated, i.e. conditions of keeping the prisoner were inhuman, degrading and did not comply with accepted standards. But it was not defined as torture and the word "torture" is absent in the verdict", comments Anna Maralyan, lawyer and Human Rights expert. 

She says the concept of "torture" should include three mandatory elements: first, it is the action by which severe physical or mental pain or suffering is intentionally inflicted to some person; second, the action should have the purpose of extorting from that or other person information or confession, or of punishing or intimidating for some action; third, such pain or suffering should be inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent of a public official.    

Mary Alexanyan

Source - www.hra.am