Monk
“Every parliamentarian and government official talks about the laws and how effective they are”, says prisoner of Goris prison Arthur Ajvazyan, 28, who was sentenced to 14 years in jail for murder, “I haven’t done anything illegal, I just protected the law and I was sentenced”. While being in prison, he has studied the Armenian Criminal Code and Constitution and thinks that the number of prisoners would be very few if the public prosecutor’s office did its job, i.e. if they didn’t investigate. According to the RA Constitution, the public prosecutor’s office doesn’t have such a right. If they worked in a duly manner, Arthur would not be punished so severely. Arthur assures us that he hasn’t killed anyone.
“They had to come up with a suspect for the murder of Samvel Arakelyan and them framed me for that crime”, says Arthur.
He has sued the prosecutor’s office, after which he was punished and taken to the Goris prison [from Nubarashen], which is very strict and where the worst criminals are imprisoned. According to lawyer Hayk Alumyan, the law doesn’t state such a strict prison regime for Arthur. Arthur has also been manipulated in the prison and has been provoked. On April 26, A. Ajvazyan beat one of the military prosecutor officials A. Ghazaryan in prison. At the time, a prison officer was escorting him out of the prison to see someone. On their way, Arthur saw an investigator beating a prisoner, interrupted and beat the investigator. On April 29, head of the criminal department of the Justice ministry, Samvel Hovhannisyan ordered a group of officers to give him a good beating. After heating him, the police instituted legal proceedings against Arthur. According to the law, officers may apply force if needed, but only if required, i.e. they don’t have a right to beat anyone for no reason. He was beaten in three days after the incident. He says that this is a violation of the law and demands the prosecutor’s office to institute legal proceedings against the beaters. After that incident, Arthur went out on a hunger strike and didn’t eat anything for 42 days. During our conversation, he had already ended his hunger strike, but still assured us that the mentioned incident had been planned beforehand. He doesn’t know whom he had to meet that day. Only relatives of criminals are allowed to visit prisoners in this prison. His relatives say that they didn’t visit him that day. Everyone in the prison knows that Arthur can’t resist any pressure, even when others are pressured; this is why he says they organized this provocation. Furthermore, Arthur assures that it was organized by the chief prosecutor’s office.
“I am not an enemy for Aghvan Hovsepyan and Andranik Mirzoyan (head of the investigation department of general prosecutor’s office)”, says Arthur, “I just want to protect the law. God bless them. I can even ready to help them if they need my help. The prosecutor’s office thinks that the justice ministry is using me against them, and vice versa. After the president’s office was informed about this they both started thinking that the president is using me against them. No, I am not a tool. I just tried to do a good deed and now I am in a terrible condition.” Arthur says that if the state decides to reconsider the closed investigation cases of the prosecutor’s office, there will be a big scandal. He says that it may start a revolution in the country and he doesn’t want that. The only thing he wants is to bring up this issue in the court, take part in the process and win. Arthur has a lot of respect in the prison. His nick name is Monk because he believes in God.
Armen
Although we visited the prison just to see Arthur, we were given an opportunity to meet other prisoners as well. Armen Amaryan is 34 and has spent 16 years in prisons, he has been sentenced 6 times. He will be released in four years. When he was free, he got married and now has a four-year old girl. Armen says that he was innocent the first time he was sentenced. “They framed me, the previous case was like that too. But the other judgments were fair because I had actually committed robbery. When I was released, nobody gave me a job and people didn’t treat me nicely just because I had been in prison. This is the reason why I had to steal again. I had to buy something for my wife and my child”. Despite the fact that Armen regrets the crimes he has committed-after all, he spent the best time of his life behind bars- he is not sure whether he will steal again or not. “I am not used to it, this is not the problem; the problem is that people don’t treat people like me well”. When he has free time, he makes souvenirs inspired by the Bible; most of the souvenirs made by the prisoners are closely connected to the Bible.
Satan
I was surprised to see that prisoners are no different from the people outside of prison. As a matter of fact, they are even well educated and informed about what’s going on in the world. They are sure that society will reject them again, thus they try to establish contacts with other prisoners behind bars. Arthur Galstyan, 25, was sentenced to life in prison in 2003 for killing his father’s friend. This case was very strange and it was even said that Arthur believed in Satan. He doesn’t deny that but says that he was just interested in those things. He has studied other things too, but assures that Satan was not the reason for him to kill his dad’s friend. “I didn’t want to kill; I just wanted to steal and was surprised when I saw the owner of the house there”. He regrets doing this, but doesn’t want to be released because he says he will be rejected by everyone.
He says silently that a girl from Yerevan has seen his picture and fallen in love with him. He doesn’t want to go out because he says that people will not look his way. He also spoke about how people treat each other and about the fact that human cruelty serves as a firm basis for crimes. Otherwise, people would not commit other crimes to go back to prison after spending many years there.