The witness was thrown out of the police station window. Insufficient investigation regarding his death.
JUDGMENT
Gulyan v. Armenia 20.09.2018 (no. 11244/12)
SUMMARY
Examination of witnesses and police station. Death of a person during his examination by the police for a homicide case. Defects in the investigative process and failure to examine the victim’s father’s allegations that his son had been thrown out by the police. The absence of dummy for a virtual representation of his death conditions. Violation of the right to life due to lack of effective research.
PROVISION
Article 2
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Ashot Gulyan, is an Armenian national who was born in 1942 and lives in Yerevan.
The case concerned the death of his 30-year-old son, Levon Gulyan, when he was being questioned
by the police as a witness in a murder case. He was found dead on 12 May 2007 in the courtyard of
Yerevan police headquarters after having apparently fallen from a second floor window.
Levon Gulyan had been taken to the headquarters for questioning about a man who had been shot
dead three days earlier in front of the restaurant he owned.
The investigation into the death was taken over by a special investigative service in December 2007
and, since then, has been repeatedly closed and resumed. Each time the investigators closed the
proceedings, they essentially concluded that Mr Gulyan had been trying to escape a planned
confrontation with another witness in the murder case because it would have obliged him to reveal
the identity of the murderer. When ordering the reopening of the investigation, the courts pointed
out numerous shortcomings, in particular the fact that the investigators had not looked into
allegations that Mr Gulyan had been ill-treated and then thrown out of the window. The courts also
gave repeated instructions to carry out a reconstitution of the events with a dummy. Most recently
the investigation was closed again in February 2012, the decision stating among other things that
there was no dummy available to carry out such a reconstitution.
Relying in particular on Article 2 (right to life), the applicant complained inter alia about the death of
his son in police custody and the authorities’ failure to carry out an effective investigation.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
Violation of Article 2 (right to life)
Violation of Article 2 (investigation)
Just satisfaction: EUR 50,000 (non-pecuniary damage) and EUR 2,000 (costs and expenses)(echrcaselaw.com editing).
