Inmates or Guests?: Photo of Socializing Oct. 27 Killers Leads To Warden’s Resignation

The escape last weekend of two inmates serving life sentences, plus a recent release of a photo showing a pro-government newspaper editor socializing inside prison walls with convicts (including those involved in the 1999 parliament assassinations), has led to the resignation today of Nubarashen Penitentiary warden Arsen Afrikyan and the dismissal of three guards.

As a search for the escapees continues, it is the photo that caused more conflict and apparent embarrassment.

In the photo (released to media by an unknown source) Artyom Khachatryan, editor of “Free Thought” (3,000 circulation) – a pro-government daily widely viewed as a scandal sheet — is shown having coffee with inmates that include Derenik Bejanyan and Edik Grigoryan who were part of Nairi Hunanyan’s gang that stormed parliament 10 years ago.
 
The photo, published in the November 26 edition of the radical oppositional ‘Armenian Times’ daily resulted in an internal investigation at the Ministry of Justice of Armenia. According to the Legislation of Armenia, group meetings in jail cells of convicts sentenced to life imprisonment are strictly prohibited.
 
The photo, which stirred clamor and complaint, and was qualified by Republican Party of Armenia’s Galust Sahakyan as a ‘disgrace’ (he also insisted that such an attitude creates “a problem of state security importance” for those convicts), belongs to Khachatryan, who says the photo was stolen from his office.

“It is a normal photo, which was shot during a visit by myself and one of my journalist (and was) allowed by law,” Khachatryan told ArmeniaNow. His daily is famous for sharp criticism directed at oppositionist leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
 
The shock of the photo for average viewers is that the cell itself resembles a modest hotel room more than the typical Armenian prison confinement.

Seeing the photo prompted oppositionist Heritage Party MP Zaruhi Postanjyan (herself victimized by “Free Thought” in a photo that pasted her face on a naked woman’s body) to call for a comparison of that cell to the ones housing prisoners she is seeking to free.
 
“It is necessary to photograph the jail cells of the convicts in the ‘March 1 Case’, they are in a very poor state, and it is necessary to compare them with the jail cell of October 27 criminals, and only then we could say whether it is a normal photo or it is not,” Postanjyan told ArmeniaNow.

Source: ArmenaiNow - Original Article

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