Captain who beat to death a regular soldier arrested in Armenia

The court of general jurisdiction of the Vaik and Ararat Regions of Armenia has satisfied the petition of the inspector of the Military Prosecutor's Office asking to arrest Captain Andok Galstyan, who beat to death private Aram Mkrtchyan.

Today, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Armenia has disseminated a statement, according to which the 8th Garrison Department of the Investigatory Service of the MoD opened a criminal case under part 2, Article 375 of the Criminal Code: "Abuse of power" (punishable by imprisonments for 3-8 years) against Captain Andok Galstyan, commander of the second platoon of the 3rd battalion of the military unit of the city of Vaik, who had beaten to death the regular soldier Aram Mkrtchyan.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Aram Mkrtchyan, 18, private of the Vaik military unit, recruited to military service this spring, died in the morning on September 1 in hospital, without coming to consciousness, from the beatings rendered to him by his commander Andok Galstyan.

Greta Mirzoyan, chair of the NGO "Soldier's Mother", told journalists in her comment on the incident: "The captain who killed his soldier has obvious mental problems; otherwise he wouldn't have done this."

According to her story, this is a very barbarous case; it happens quite seldom.

Ms Mirzoyan said that as far as she knows the captain was not intoxicated and added that she would offer to hold psychiatric examination of all the officers in order to exclude similar cases.