NEW PRISON SCANDAL: ARMENIAN INMATE PLEDGES TO NAIL FOOT
tert.am
22.11.12
An inmate at a Yerevan penitentiary is going to mutilate his body to
an utter extent as a sign of protest against the prison authorities’
indifference to his health problem.
Artak Hakobyan, who serves time at the Nubarashen Penitentiary, said
the employees in prison pay no heed to his deteriorating condition
caused by a health problem. He has promised to sew his mouth shut
and nail his foot to express his protest.
Hakobyan complained that his requests for a medical checkup have been
continuously ignored.
“They tell me to highlight twice in the written request that I want
to cover the NMR costs on my own. I write it, but they never take
me for an examination. Others write it and are immediately taken,”
said the convict.
Hakobyan said that he was offered to have a blood test at a private
clinic for 24,5000 Drams ($60), notwithstanding that fact that convicts
should benefit from government funding for medical check-ups.
“Now the answers have come; they are very bad,” he complained.
Earlier, a deputy chief at the Goris penitentiary, Narek Harutyunyan,
was jailed for demanding $4,000 from Hakobyan’s family to make his
hospitalization possible.
A medical assistant at Nubarashen was later reported to have attempted
to stab him. But a press secretary denied the report. Hakobyan,
however, claims the information is true. He says the attempted attack
occurred three days after he was taken to a medical unit.
“This is how they take money from all, keeping them there for five
or six days,” he said, complaining that a quarantined ward did not
much differ from a prison cell.
Hakobyan remembered that a professor in the Goris city hospital had
diagnosed him with preinfarction symptoms after he was taken there
by ambulance earlier this year.
An investigator at the Special Investigation Service later left for
Goris to obtain a copy of Artak’s medical records
The inmate said he was swindled out of $1,500 under the pretext of
being taken to hospital but was later moved to a quarantined war.
Commenting on Hakobyan’s complaints, the press secretary of Nubarashen
Penitentiary, Gor Ghlechyan, said he has the video record of the
conversation between him and the inmate.
“I didn’t talk him into doing anything; I just went there to know
if anything of the kind had happened,” he said. Asked to comment
why he had denied the report, given that the medical assistant was
later sacked, Ghlechyan said the decision had nothing to do with
Hakobyan’s case.
Speaking to Tert.am, Ghlechyan again denied the report about the
stabbing attempt. He said the different specialist who have examined
Hakobyan (cardiologist, neurologist etc.) had not detected any disease
at all.
“The convict is now under a psychiatrist’s observation. Depending on
his conclusion, they will think of what to do next,” he said.