Author: Emil Lazarian

The 18-year-old Davit Minasian reportedly passed out and was hospitalized while being taken to the Armavir prison about 50 kilometers west of the Armenian capital. He was transported to the prison a few hours later.

Earlier in the day, the court remanded Minasian in two-month custody, ignoring pleas from his lawyers and mother Gayane. The latter issued late on Tuesday a relevant open letter to the judge who made the decision. The veteran judge, Mnatsakan Martirosian, is notorious for having routinely handed down rulings sought by the country’s current and former authorities.

During a court hearing on Minasian’s pre-trial arrest, the defense lawyers said the young man should not be incarcerated not only because he did not commit any crime but also because of suffering from an undiagnosed chronic allergy.

“David lost consciousness on his way to the Armavir penitentiary institution,” one of the lawyers, told reporters afterwards. “The boy was taken by ambulance to the Echmiadzin Medical Center in serious condition.”

The criminal case stems from Pashinian’s unexpected visit to St. Anne’s Church in Yerevan during a Palm Sunday Mass held there. The church was packed with worshippers, among them Minasian, and Pashinian’s bodyguards had to clear the way for his passage. A visibly annoyed Minasian told them not to push him and said he wants to keep “standing in the middle” of the church.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he then told Pashinian before stretching a hand towards his shoulder.

Minasian was seemingly knocked down by one of the bodyguards as Pashinian left the church amid angry cries from other believers. He was arrested right after the liturgy along with his twin brother Mikael and Gevorg Gevorgian, an activist critical of the Armenian government.

The Investigative Committee charged Davit Minasian with committing a violent hooligan act in a bid to interfere with Pashinian’s “political activities.” For their part, Gevorgian and Mikael Minasian were charged with organizing and assisting in the alleged hooliganism respectively. Unlike Davit, they both were freed on bail on Tuesday.

Investigators searched the brothers’ Yerevan apartment on Wednesday morning for the second time in three days. It remained unclear what they looked for.

Pashinian’s political allies have defended the arrests, saying that Minasian assaulted the prime minister. Some of them have also blamed the incident on Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinian has been controversially trying to depose.

Armenian opposition figures counter, however, that the incident was the result of what they see as Pashinian’s provocative behavior. They claim that Pashinian ordered Minasian’s arrest and prosecution in a bid to intimidate disgruntled Armenians ahead of the June 7 parliamentary elections.

“The two 18-year-old school students are told to show respect by those who did not show respect for dozens of believers in the church at their most sacred moment,” said Arman Tatoyan, a former human rights ombudsman. “The self-proclaimed believer [Pashinian] pushed people aside in the middle of the service and broke through their ranks with his bodyguards and entourage, forgetting that a humble believer does not behave in this way in a church.”

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The alliance does not comprise former President Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) that hoped to join forces with Karapetian for the elections scheduled for June 7. Karapetian’s Strong Armenia party chose to team up instead with two other, little-known opposition parties led by lawyers.

The three parties signed a memorandum on the creation of the bloc, named Strong Armenia With Samvel Karapetian, during a ceremony in Yerevan.

“We must give a new opportunity to young and high-potential forces,” said Narek Karapetian, the tycoon’s nephew and right-hand man coordinating Strong Armenia’s activities.

“Politicians don’t have to be just professional politicians,” he told the press. “They must also have professional backgrounds in order to understand various fields. It is on the basis of professionalism that we have created the vision for our association.”

He did not say why the tycoon, who remains under house arrest, decided not to include Ter-Petrosian’s HAK into his electoral alliance.

In a recent series of social media posts, the 81-year-old ex-president, who had led Armenia to independence in 1991, lavished praise on Samvel Karapetian and endorsed him for the elections. Karapetian’s political team reacted cautiously to those overtures.

Karapetian pledged to unseat Armenia’s current government shortly after being arrested and prosecuted last June following his strong criticism of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to depose the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Garegin II. He was initially charged with calling for a violent regime. Law-enforcement authorities also brought tax evasion and fraud charges against him after he announced plans to challenge Pashinian in the 2026 elections.

The 60-year-old tycoon, who has mostly lived in Russian and made his fortune there since the early 1990s, rejects all accusations as politically motivated. He was moved to house arrest in December.

Under the Armenian constitution, Karapetian cannot become prime minister or even hold a parliament seat because of his dual Russian citizenship. His party has made clear that it will try to remove this constitutional hurdle if it wins the elections.

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