Pashinian Supporter Not Prosecuted For Death Call Against Armenian Church Head

Pashinian attended at the time a Sunday mass in Garni, a large village 27 kilometers east of Yerevan, led by a renegade priest as part of his efforts to depose the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. His political allies and other supporters were also in attendance.

A journalist with a pro-government news website interviewed some of those people in the courtyard of the local church. He wondered, in particular, what they think would force Garegin to bow to government pressure and resign.

“They should hit him on the head with a stone and kill him,” replied Edvard Stepanian, a 70-year-old Garni resident working for the village administration.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee launched an inquiry into the statement amid an uproar from Pashinian’s critics. The law-enforcement agency waited for months before petitioning the prosecutor overseeing the probe to allow Stepanian’s indictment on relevant charges.

The prosecutor refused to do that. As of Wednesday evening, the Office of the Prosecutor-General did not explain the decision in response to a written question sent by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

“I consider this to be the result of an order issued by the political authorities,” said Ruben Melikian, a prominent human rights lawyers critical of the Armenian government. “Law enforcement officers are simply executing it.”

The Investigative Committee’s inquiry into the death threat is officially going on. The committee says it is awaiting the findings of a linguistic examination of Stepanian’s statement ordered by it.

By contrast, law-enforcement authorities have been quick to prosecute Pashinian’s detractors accused of insulting the premier and other senior officials or threatening them with violence. Rafael Sargsian, a 73-year-old man, was charged with making a death threat against Pashinian last summer the day after angrily declaring that he is looking for a way to “catch Nikol and tear off his neck.”

In November, two pro-opposition podcasters, Naren Samsonian and Vazgen Saghatelian, were arrested on charges of making offensive and menacing statements about parliament speaker Alen Simonian. Both men were moved to house arrest this spring.

Artak Avetisian, a Yerevan resident, was arrested and indicted in May hours after using offensive language to attack Pashinian. Avetisian lashed out at the premier on social media as the latter campaigned for the June 7 parliamentary elections near his neighborhood. Melikian, who represents him, said the authorities’ failure to prosecute the Garni man is a “blatant” example of their selective and politically motivated enforcement of laws.

No Pashinian supporters have been prosecuted for offending or voicing threats against opposition politicians. Pashinian himself publicly insulted his political foes and threatened to jail them during the election campaign.

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