Prison inmate dies in Armenian penitentiary

ArmInfo. A few days ago, another prisoner, 42-year-old Tavros Voskanyan, died in a penitentiary institution (PI) in Armenia. He had illnesses  incompatible with pretrial detention, as journalist Roza Vardanyan reported on her Facebook page.

She noted that this is the first death in prison in 2026. "It's  noteworthy that we learned of this not from an official source, but  from a news website, and the prisoner's death was recorded as early  as February 17," Vardanyan noted.

According to her, Voskanyan repeatedly contacted the Prison  Monitoring Group, which sent letters to the Armenian Minister of  Health. "Voskanyan requested a change in his sentence so he could  receive the necessary medical care, but was refused. The prisoner  resorted to extreme measures several times: he went on hunger strike  and refused to drink even water, but this also failed to improve his  situation. He even resorted to the extreme step of swallowing foreign  objects up to 15 cm long: a thermometer, a file, and pieces of iron.  Some of these were removed from his body," the journalist reported.

Furthermore, as Vardanyan noted, the head of the Penitentiary  Medicine Center, Kamo Manukyan, told a media outlet that recent  examinations revealed that the prisoner had illnesses that could be  considered ineligible for imprisonment.

As the journalist again noted, the prisoner who died in prison was  essentially a prisoner who should not have been there due to his  health condition. "That's all you need to know about our judicial  system," Vardanyan concluded.

As a reminder, as of December 2025, 23 deaths had already been  recorded in Armenian prisons, eight of which were suicides. Garnik  Danielyan, a member of the opposition Armenia faction in the National  Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, noted that the deplorable  conditions in Armenia's penal institutions have led to the increase  in prisoner mortality. Most often, the MP noted, despite acute health  problems and numerous complaints, prisoners are not transferred to a  medical facility, they are not provided with adequate medical care,  and there is also a shortage of medications. He also drew attention  to the lack of basic living conditions, sanitary and hygienic  conditions, water quality, and adequate medical care in penal  institutions. Following this, media reports emerged about suicides in  penal institutions.