Hrachya Harutyunyan’s family still waiting for his transfer
Relatives of Hrachya Harutyunyan, an Armenian truck driver sentenced to 6 years and 9 months in prison by a Moscow court, still hope that he will be transferred to Armenia and will serve the rest of the sentence here. “The Ministry of Justice told us to wait assuring us that everything would be all right but we do not have any news,” Harutyunyan’s wife Anahit Martirosyan told “A1+”. In January, Justice Minister Hovhannes Manukyan received Hrachya Harutyunyan’s relatives and informed them that the issue of Harutyunyan’s extradition is under consideration. On July 13, 2013 the gravel-loaded truck driven by Hrachya Harutiunian, an Armenian citizen working in Russia collided with a packed commuter bus outside the Russian capital. The impact of the crash was so powerful that the bus had split in two. The accident claimed 18 lives and injured more than forty others. The investigation revealed that the accident resulted from poor maintenance of the truck resulting in a brake malfunction. Harutyunyan, according to investigators, was to know about it. On August 4, a Moscow district court sentenced Hrachya Harutyunyan to six years and nine months in prison on charges of “violating traffic and vehicle operation rules, which has unwittingly led to the death of two or more persons.” And the Moscow Municipal Court upheld this verdict. Hrachya Harutyunyan pleaded guilty of the crime.
