“I was standing on the sidewalk waiting for a bus. All of a sudden, a car stopped right in front of me. It was inches away from me,” said Marina Janoyan.
Then, a tall (approximately 5’7), fat but strong 30-year old man came out of the car. The latter came up close to the lawyer and threatened her in a gentle voice.
“Are you thinking about someone else’s life? Think about your own. Who gave you the right to accuse us? Don’t get ahead of yourself. Be careful.” After that, the man got in the car and drove away.
The lawyer got the chance to see the license plate and she says that it started with the number “64”.
“It was a silver car and the man had his own license numbers. I can’t tell which car is which, but I know that it was a foreign car. It looked like a BMW,” she said.
According to Mrs. Janoyan, the reason for the threat was the speech she made at a press conference held on February 9 when she touched upon the murder of professor of the Bryusov state university Joshua Hagland on May 17, 2004. She mentioned the fact that it had already been one and half years, yet the case had not been investigated. The Yerevan prosecutor’s office has quashed the case and there are no legal proceedings. During the press conference, Janoyan had said that the case had been quashed and led in the wrong direction by some high deputy officials. Then, the lawyer presented a 10 point proposal to the prosecutor’s office in order to recognize the quashing of the case as invalid.
“I have no other murder case at the moment, so they can’t threaten me by saying that you shouldn’t think about someone else,” said Mrs. Janoyan.
As for what happened to her, she suspects police.
“Police could not talk in such a nice, low but threatening tone like that man did. I think that the man was from the military service. I can not forget his face.”
As a matter of fact, yesterday Marina Janoyan also said that this wasn’t the first time that she or her family members had been threatened. This was the fourth one. The first time was back in 1999 when she and her husband, who is also a lawyer, were defending member of the Armenian National Movement and former Minister of Internal Affairs Vano Siradeghyan.
“Back then, they were trying to poison my son. Then, in 2002, I was attacked by thieves. In 2004, my husband’s car was stolen when he spoke about a well-known case. This is the fourth time,” says Mrs. Janoyan. She and her husband had told the police about the previous events, but those cases are still not investigated. This time, Janoyan thinks it’s absurd to even call the police.