The court refused to soften the preventive measures for the Khachaturyan sisters.
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The court in Moscow refused to soften the preventive measures for the Khachaturyan sisters, who are accused of murdering their father. They have been prohibited from seeing each other for eight years. The lawyers also complained about the delays and the refusal of the investigation to terminate the criminal case.
As reported by "Caucasian Knot", in May 2022, the investigation completed the investigation into the case of child abuse involving Mikhail Khachaturyan, whose murder is attributed to his three daughters. At the same time, investigators intensified the charges due to the distribution of intimate materials involving the daughters of the murdered man. The case against the Khachaturyan sisters, accused of murdering their father, was returned to investigators by the prosecutor's office in October 2023. The agency reminded that the girls had been subjected to violence in the family and demanded to specify the motives for the murder in the indictment. At the end of January, the Investigative Committee resumed the investigation of the case.
In July 2018, the three Khachaturyan sisters, aged 17 to 19, were detained in Moscow on suspicion of murdering their father. In July 2020, the Prosecutor General's Office approved charges against two sisters, requiring the Investigative Committee to reclassify the crime as necessary self-defense. The case of the youngest sister, recognized as insane, was decided to be considered separately. Later, the court ruled to return the sisters' case to the Prosecutor General's Office for further investigation.
The Basmanny Court of Moscow refused to soften the preventive measures for the three Khachaturyan sisters, communication between them, as well as communication with other participants in the investigation, remains prohibited, reports Kommersant on September 15.
According to lawyer Yaroslav Pakulin, representing Maria Khachaturyan, the case is experiencing "monstrous delays". The court session, where the request to soften the preventive measures was denied, took place back in July, but the decision was only handed down now. Moreover, the hearing itself occurred five months after the complaint was filed.
Initially, the sisters were placed in a pre-trial detention center, but after a campaign in their defense as victims of domestic violence, they were released under a ban on certain actions. They are prohibited from communicating with each other, as well as with other participants in the case, except for their mother, and are forbidden to communicate with media representatives, use phones, and access the internet. Over time, most of the prohibitions were lifted by the investigators, and the girls even managed to find jobs. However, they have not been able to communicate with each other for almost eight years, and they could only meet in court or during investigative actions, which have not occurred for two years.
In their complaints, the lawyers referred to the excessive duration of the prohibitions, noting that the plenary session of the Supreme Court of Russia determined that such measures should be "proportional, commensurate, and necessary", and that courts should "maintain a balance between public interests related to the application of procedural coercive measures and the importance of the right to personal freedom". According to the defenders, the prohibition on communication with the sisters affects their psychological state and is, in fact, cruel treatment of them.
The lawyers also stated that the refusal of the investigator of the Investigative Committee of Russia to satisfy the petition for terminating the criminal case was illegal, in their opinion. The decision to recognize Mikhail Khachaturyan guilty of violent sexual acts has entered into legal force, and in the spring, the Investigative Committee received a demand from the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia to "eliminate violations" that occurred during the prolonged investigation, meaning that there was effectively an instruction to close the case due to the absence of a crime. The investigator, according to the defense, had already begun preparing the relevant procedural documents but then wrote a report about retiring. The materials were transferred to another investigator, who combined two criminal cases into one - regarding Kristina and Angelina and regarding Maria, who was a minor in 2018 and was recognized as insane at the time of the crime.
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