The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe met on March 3-5 to assess the execution of the European Court’s judgments by member states.

The Committee of Ministers looked into implementation of the judgments by Armenia in two particular cases: Chiragov and Others v. Armenia and Virabyan (Group) v. Armenia.

As for the first case, the deputies decided to resume consideration of the present case at one of their meetings in 2020.

When referring to Virabyan (Group) v. Armenia case, the deputies underlined for all cases of this group that the swift reopening of investigations is crucial to avoid, to the extent possible, the prescription of the offences and to secure evidence.

 They noted with interest the investigative measures taken in the Ayvazyan case and considered that no other individual measures are possible; consequently decided to close their supervision of the individual measures in this case.

The deputies called on the authorities to pursue all possible measures to establish the circumstances of Mr. Gulyan’s death and bring to justice those responsible; in this context, invited them to indicate the possibility in domestic law for victims or their families to obtain an independent review of decisions to close or suspend criminal investigations into acts contrary to Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention.

They noted with interest the authorities’ intention to install audio and video surveillance in police premises and encouraged them to complete this within the envisaged timeframe and called on the authorities to adopt the new Code of Criminal Procedure, containing additional procedural guarantees against ill-treatment, without further delay.