The European Court of Human Rights has found violations of Articles 2 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights arising from the death of an Armenian conscript and the authorities’ subsequent investigation.
The applicant, Pertch Margaryan, is an Armenian national whose son, A. Margaryan, was drafted into the Armenian army in December 2013. On 4 December 2014, approximately one year after his conscription, A. Margaryan was found in a trench near his sentry post with a gunshot wound to his chest.
The authorities immediately commenced a criminal investigation, including an examination of the scene, a post-mortem examination and the questioning of witnesses. The post-mortem report concluded that the cause of death was a ballistic injury to the chest. A separate examination established that the cartridge recovered from the scene had been fired from A. Margaryan’s assault rifle. No identifiable fingerprints were found on the rifle, while one of four servicemen tested for gunshot residue returned a positive result.
In November 2015, the investigating authority ordered a posthumous psychological and psychiatric assessment of A. Margaryan. Relying in part on witness statements describing his behaviour as “strange”, the resulting report concluded that he had a “high degree of personal maladjustment” which had led him to kill himself. The criminal investigation was subsequently terminated in February 2016, with the authorities relying principally on that assessment.
Mr Margaryan challenged the decision, arguing that the investigation had failed to examine the possibility that his son had been targeted in retaliation for testimony he had given in a criminal case. He also questioned the apparently identical accounts given by fellow servicemen concerning his son’s alleged unusual behaviour. Those accounts appeared inconsistent with records concerning his conduct before and after conscription, which indicated that he had been regarded as stable and had adapted to military life. His military command had also apparently observed no unusual behaviour and had continued to assign him duties involving a firearm.
The applicant ultimately brought proceedings before the European Court, relying on Article 2 of the Convention in respect of his son’s death and the investigation that followed. He also relied on Article 13, arguing that Armenian law provided no effective possibility of obtaining compensation from the State for the loss of his son.
The Court found that the investigation, although completed in just over one year, had been seriously deficient. It identified a number of significant shortcomings and unexplained discrepancies which prevented the authorities from establishing reliably what had happened.
In particular, the investigation had failed to establish when the servicemen discovered A. Margaryan, whether they had heard a gunshot and, if so, when, or whether he was already dead when they found him. The authorities had also failed to provide an adequate explanation for the absence of fingerprints on the rifle, including those of the deceased. The experts had not established the distance from which the fatal shot had been fired, which could have assisted in determining whether another person could have been responsible.
The Court further noted that gunshot residue testing had been carried out on only four servicemen and that no adequate follow-up had been undertaken after one of those tests returned a positive result.
The Court was particularly critical of the reliance placed on the posthumous psychiatric assessment. It had been based on limited evidence, including selected statements describing A. Margaryan’s behaviour as unusual, while apparently contradicting records before and after his conscription which portrayed him as a stable individual who had adapted to military life.
The authorities had therefore failed to investigate alternative explanations for the death, despite the inconclusive evidence supporting the suicide hypothesis. The Court emphasised that authorities must not rely on hasty or ill-founded conclusions to terminate an investigation. It also criticised the national courts for summarily dismissing the applicant’s appeals despite the detailed questions he had raised.
The Court concluded that the investigation had failed to meet the requirements of Article 2 and that, because its conclusions were unreliable, the authorities had also failed to provide a plausible explanation for the death of a person who had been in their care. This constituted a further violation of Article 2.
In relation to Article 13, the Court found that Armenian law did not provide an independent avenue for establishing State responsibility for the death of a person in the authorities’ care. Instead, the possibility of obtaining compensation depended on the criminal investigation resulting in the prosecution or conviction of a State official or another individual.
The Court considered that this imposed too high a threshold for establishing liability for the purposes of obtaining compensation. It therefore found a violation of Article 13 on the basis that the applicant had no effective legal possibility of claiming compensation for the breach of his son’s right to life.