The Human Rights Defender appealed to the Constitutional Court, by raising the question of constitutionality of the legislative regulations regarding administrative arrest and detention. The relevance of the legal issues mentioned in the application is mostly due to the ongoing violations of human rights in law enforcement practice.
Thus, throughout the events unfolding during the month of July around the RA police patrol service, violations of human rights by police officers were recorded: they were mainly related to not immediately informing the person about the reasons of depriving him/her of liberty, not permitting a lawyer to enter the police building, etc.
Accordingly, in the appeal sent to the Constitutional Court by the Human Rights Defender it was mentioned that there was need to comprehensively regulate the institutions of administrative arrest and detention and to ensure the minimum volume of individual rights.
According to the application the initial moment of exercising the mechanism of deprivation of liberty shall be considered taking a person into actual custody, regardless of the name of the applicable type of influene or the person’s status. Accordingly, a person must have the right:
- to immediately be informed of the reasons of being deprived of liberty,
- to inform the person chosen by him/her about his/her being deprived of liberty,
- to have a lawyer,
- to have a medical examination, including by a doctor of his choice,
- to litigate the lawfulness of the deprivation of his liberty and to be released by the court, if the deprivation of liberty is unlawful.
Within the framework of the procedure of depriving a person of liberty on the basis of infringement in addition to the above-mentioned rights the individual’s right to remain silent should be ensured.
In the appeal submitted to the Constitutional Court issues have been raised also related to making a report about the fact of deprivation of liberty, giving it to the person deprived of liberty, issues related to the requirements for the content of the report. Practice shows that there are a lot of cases when citizens mention, for example, about the use of violence in their complaint, but the report prepared by the police does not indicate that, and this is due to the lack of legislative regulation.