According to Ruben Melikian, a well-known lawyer defending critics of the Armenian government, he protested against Pashinian in that way when he noticed the premier’s motorcade near his home in Yerevan on Sunday. Melikian said the high school student identified by him by his first name, Mikael, was arrested on the spot.

“When the boy was asked why he did it, he replied that ‘the Turk has sold out our lands,’” the lawyer said in a live Facebook broadcast. “The prosecutor construed this _expression_ as an obscenity, and Mikael was arrested on suspicion of hooliganism.”

The student was indicted but released from police custody two days later, added Melikian. Armenia’s Investigative Committee, declined to comment on the reported incident. The law-enforcement agency had famously refrained from prosecuting a top Pashinian ally, parliament speaker Alen Simonian, for spitting at a heckler in Yerevan in 2023.

In Melikian’s words, the incident took places just a few hours after Pashinian was confronted by another youth during a Palm Sunday Mass at Yerevan’s St. Anne’s Church. The church was packed with worshippers, and Pashinian’s bodyguards had to clear the way for his passage. The 18-year-old Davit Minasian raged at Pashinian and seemingly tried to lay his hands on the latter after telling the bodyguards not to jostle him.

Minasian was arrested along with his twin brother and another man right after the church service. He remained under arrest on Tuesday, with investigators seeking a court permission to keep him behind bars for two months on charges of hooliganism and obstruction of Pashinian’s “political activities.”

Pashinian has spent the last few weekends touring various parts of Armenia and talking to people in a clear effort to woo them ahead of showdown parliamentary elections slated for June 7. Some of those citizens caused him to lose his temper by openly denouncing his policies or complaining about his government’s track record.