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Special Investigation Service of Armenia, dealing with criminal cases of high-ranking officials, remains a close institution for the public. The head of the institution almost never or rarely gives interviews, once or twice appears on TV. Moreover, only one or two TV stations are invited to cover their collegial meetings, no other media seems to exist for SIS.

Probably, for their peace of mind they share a message per day on criminal cases considering their mission accomplished. Those messages are mainly dry, have nothing important to convey, yet raise many questions. Those questions addressed to the SIS mainly through telephone calls are left unanswered. Even if they take the calls, the answer remains the same, “Send us the questions by e-mail and we’ll reply”.
Another meaningless message published by SIS press service on March 30 concerns a case in one of the hospitals (September 21, 2015), when the patient waking up from coma first beat the doctor then the policeman. The latter fired his gun for self defence.

According to the SIS, an investigation has been carried out for 7 months on charges of hooliganism and violence against government representative. Then at the end the message informed, “The Chief Prosecutor of Armenia based on the need of full, objective and comprehensive investigation sent the criminal case to the SIS. The investigation continues”.

Hasmik Hambardzumyan tried to contact the SIS to find out why the criminal case had been sent to them, but her call was ignored.

The following is a query about a criminal case of October 23, 2015. The SIS never replied.

The SIS needs to change their work policy, otherwise one-sided materials without explanation will appear.

It’s high time for the Special Investigation Service to rethink their approach and be more open to the journalists which is in their interests.