PROSECUTOR-GENERAL'S TIP-MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 YEREVAN 001524 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR G/TIP, DRL AND EUR/CARC E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/30/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL KTIP KWMN KCRM HSTC AM SUBJECT: PROSECUTOR-GENERAL'S TIP-MISCONDUCT INVESTIGATION DISAPPOINTS REF: A) YEREVAN 1091 B) YEREVAN 1161 C) YEREVAN 484 YEREVAN 00001524 001.2 OF 002 Classified By: CDA A. F. Godfrey for reasons 1. 4 (b, d). -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) An internal probe of allegations of misconduct with human traffickers by two investigators in the Prosecutor General's (PG) Office is apparently over, and the investigators reportedly cleared of all charges. No results have been released publicly. Sources within the PG's Office and some NGO members of a special PG task force called the probe a farce. This result is discouraging, but unsurprising given the PG's attitude during an August 8 meeting with the Ambassador, DCM and Poloff (ref A). We have scheduled a series of meetings with GOAM officials to pursue the TIP issue, and will report the results septel. END SUMMARY. -------------- INTERNAL INVESTIGATION TASK FORCES -------------- ¶2. (C) The PG launched the internal investigation in late August as a direct result of our meeting with him (ref A). We presented allegations by three alleged trafficking victims that, among other things, two investigators in the PG's Office had pressured them to change their testimonies, and that an investigator slapped one of them during questioning. ¶3. (C) The PG created two task forces to review the allegations: an internal probe and a commission of outside NGO representatives. The internal commission included the head of the PG's Office's Anti-Corruption Department and the PG's senior aide, who had also been involved in the earlier, cursory investigation into allegations against Yeremyan. Two investigators were the subject of the internal probe: Aristakes Yeremyan, who had been the subject of a February internal investigation into similar allegations (ref C),and Armen Gasparyan. ¶4. (C) Two NGO leaders also sat on the internal commission as observers: Julieta Amirkhanyan, the president of "Femida" NGO, who admitted to us that she had no experience in anti-TIP work, and Edik Baghdasaryan from the Association of Investigative Journalists. The PG also had attempted to involve Yenok Shatvoryan of Hope and Help, the NGO that first brought the alleged victims' charges to our attention. Shatvoryan told us he declined because he felt his proper role in the original investigation (the case of the three alleged TIP victims the investigators were accused of pressuring) was that of a witness, not a watchdog. Shatvoryan told us that he was never questioned by the commission's investigators. Another NGO leader who had originally been involved in the commission told us she had quit because she felt it was a conflict of interest to work both with trafficking victims and with law enforcement. (COMMENT: Amirkhanyan is a personal friend of the PG, Baghdasaryan may be considered neutral, and Shatvoryan is a TIP activist clearly skeptical of the PG's intentions. END COMMENT.) ¶5. (C) The second commission created by the PG was an NGO task force whose job was ostensibly to monitor the overall work of the PG's Anti-TIP Unit. The task force included five members -- the two observers from the internal investigation commission, Hope and Help's Shatvoryan, a representative from the Association of Audio-Visual Reporters NGO, and the leader of Democracy Today NGO, who had quit the internal investigation commission. ¶6. (C) Armen Boshnaghyan (please protect),a senior investigator in the Anti-TIP Unit, said the PG instructed his staff to think about the NGO task force's mandate only after it had been convened. NGO task force members told us the task force met only once, at its initial meeting. (COMMENT: Boshnaghyan seems to be trying to do the right thing, and is abashed by Yeremyan,s misbehavior. END COMMENT.) -------------- THE INVESTIGATION -------------- ¶7. (C) While the probe was underway, the officials under scrutiny remained in charge of the original investigation, into the alleged human trafficking case, whose victims had accused them of misconduct in the first place. Boshnaghyan YEREVAN 00001524 002.2 OF 002 told us the PG's Office did not have an ethics code to exclude such practice, nor a separate division to conduct internal investigations. He said the PG convened an ad-hoc commission for each investigation. Boshnaghyan told us he was skeptical about the investigation and predicted that it would meet the same fate as the previous investigation (ref C). Boshnaghyan reiterated a warning he has given us several times: that the PG seems determined to keep Yeremyan in the Anti-Tip Unit, despite protestations of Yeremyan's repeated requests to be transferred. ¶8. (C) According to journalist Baghdasaryan, the internal investigators met more than once with two of the three alleged victims. One of them, who had initially complained that Yeremyan had slapped her while questioning, withdrew her testimony at one of the meetings. The commission members did not call in Hope and Help to testify as witnesses. Baghdasaryan told us that he was called to the PG,s Office September 28 to see the written results of the investigation, and to sign the document, which he refused to do. He told us he disagreed with the results, which cleared the investigators of all charges of wrongdoing, and that he sent his own observations to the PG's Office in writing on October ¶2. (NOTE: Baghdasaryan's credibility with respect to the Prosecutor's office was called into question in the past, when he published allegations in a high-profile series alleging corruption in that office, and refused all entreaties (including ours) to produce the evidence he claimed to have. END NOTE.) ¶9. (C) Task force member Amirkhanyan -- the PG's friend -- told us that while she thought the PG intended to protect his investigators from allegations of wrongdoing, she was certain the victims' allegations were groundless. She told us she had based her opinion on a taped phone conversation she heard at the Prosecutor's Office, during which the victim tells the pimp who had allegedly trafficked her to Turkey that she would rescind her testimony if the pimp paid her. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶10. (C) Judging from the information we have received so far, the investigation seems a concerted attempt to convey the appearance of an objective and thorough probe, but without any of the effort that would actually render the results meaningful. We have planned a series of meetings with senior GOAM officials to raise this matter. GODFREY