The Council of Europe’s anti-torture Committee (CPT) gave Armenia a generally favorable assessment in its report issued today summing up its preliminary findings of its September 2023 visit to several prisons and police stations in Armenia.

The main objective of the September 2023 visit was to review measures taken by Armenian authorities in response to the recommendations made by the CPT after previous visits. 

The report says that most of the people interviewed by the delegation, who were or had recently been in police custody, stated that they had been treated correctly by the police. However, the delegation did hear some allegations of recent physical ill-treatment of persons detained by the police.

The CPT delegation, last September, visited the Nubarashen, Armavir, Artik and Abovyan Prisons as well as the Prison Hospital. 

“The delegation is pleased to report that it did not receive any allegations of physical ill-treatment by staff in the penitentiary establishments visited,” the report reads.

The CPT calls on Armenia to close the Prison Hospital as soon as possible, given the advanced degree of dilapidation of the whole establishment (apart from some of the rooms previously renovated using patients’ own financial means).

The report says the delegation interviewed a transgender patient at the Armavir Prison’s medical unit who had been held in de facto solitary confinement for over two and a half years, aggravated by communication difficulties (given that the prisoner concerned only spoke Spanish and no more than a few words in Armenian).

Today’s report says such isolation is “totally unacceptable” and requests “the Armenian authorities to confirm, within one month, that the prisoner concerned has been offered meaningful human contact (for example, association with other Spanish-speaking prisoners, if needed under appropriate supervision) for at least 2 hours per day.

Today’s report says the CPT delegation found no credible proof of allegations that staffers were mistreating residents of the Nork Residential Care Home for the elderly and/or persons with disabilities in Yerevan, and the Vardenis Neuropsychiatric Residential Care Home for persons with psychiatric disorders and learning disabilities,