ArmInfo. Armenia's Human Rights Defender Arman Tatoyan agrees with the opinion of US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills about excessive use of force by police against demonstrators and journalists on July 29-30. "Of course, I agree. Such actions were registered not only during those days", Arman Tatoyan stated.
As regards the US Ambassador's assessment of inappropriateness of using pretrial detention for participants of the protest norms of international law should be strictly observed in this case according to Tatoyan. "When a measure of arrest is being discussed, alternative measures of restriction should be used first and only when such measures are not efficient arrest should be used as the most severe measure", Tatoyan mentioned.
At the same time answering to ArmInfo's question how many of the alternative measures have been used against protesters Arman Tatoyan stated. "Yes, there is such a problem in Armenia, in overall there is a problem related to use of arrest". Adoption of new Criminal-Procedural Code will help to find solutions to this problem, Tatoyan considers.
To note, yesterday during a press conference Mills expressed concern related to reports of excessive use of force used by the police against unarmed protestors and journalists on July 29-30. "I will be frank that in the case of Erebuni and other politically sensitive cases this year, we are concerned by the pre- trial detentions of several defendants who participated in the demonstrations or are suspected of giving non-violent support to the militants, but were not involved in the actual armed seizure of the police station or in the deaths of the policemen. Let me be clear, my intention in mentioning these cases is not to prejudge their guilt or innocence, but to emphasize that each pre-trial detention decision must be based on a strong, fully transparent legal rationale," he noted.