Opposition activist Avetik Chalabyan, a member of the Hayakve initiative, on Wednesday again rejected the charges levelled against him as politically motivated.
His comments came after the prosecutor dealing with his case asked the Yerevan court to find Chalabyan guilty for trying to pay students of the Armenian National Agrarian University to participate in anti-government protests in Yerevan back in 2022 and ban his political activities, including holding rallies, for over two years.
“The whole process is politically motivated,” Chalabyan told reporters after the court hearing, vowing to challenge any ruling in his case in higher courts.
“I’d like to call attention to the prosecutor's paradoxical idea that the failure to plead guilty is an aggravating circumstance. This is something absurd because everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and it has nothing to do with the gravity of the act in question,” he claimed.