Hetq‘s request to visit written to visit Sarkis Hatspanian, a French-Armenian serving time in the Vardashen Correctional Facility for "false denunciation", has been turned down twice by the Department of Corrections

We originally sent a written request to Minister of Justice Hrayr Tovmasyan. Our petition was then forwarded to the Department of Corrections and two weeks later we received a refusal letter from Arsen Babayan, who heads the departments oublic affairs division. Babayan argued that that due to the agency’s tremendous workload our request couldn’t be permitted at this time and that we should reapply in 1-2 months.

This is not the first time we have received such a puzzling response from Mr. Babayan.

We wrote back to Minister Tovmasyan, explained the situation, and asked what exactly was going on at the Department of Corrections for them to be so busy and stretched for the next two months.

Given that the Corrections Department is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry we asked Mr. Tovmasyan to tell us when reporters would be allowed into the prisons.

The reply we got was again from Babayan at the Department of Corrections. This time the excuse given was organizational and security concerns."

Go figure...