Category: News

The 18-year-old Davit Minasian was set free pending trial one day after being moved back to prison from a Yerevan hospital where he received treatment for a head injury reportedly sustained by him during the March 29 incident. His lawyers protested against the transfer, saying that he has still not recovered from the concussion.

Minasian’s release was ordered by the same prosecutor who refused to free him as recently as last Friday, dismissing appeals from Armenian civic groups and many citizens. The development came the day after a group of women began a daily sit-in outside the Office of the Prosecutor-General in Yerevan to protest against his imprisonment.

“By taking Davit back [to prison,] they simply want to intimidate and silence rebellious citizens,” one of the women told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service earlier on Tuesday.

The incident in question occurred during a Plam Sunday Mass in St. Anne’s Church. The church was packed with worshippers when Pashinian unexpectedly arrived there with his bodyguards, who cleared 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 punched and knocked down by one of the bodyguards. He was arrested and charged with hooliganism and obstruction of Pashinian’s “political activities” shortly after the premier left the church amid angry cries from other believers.

Also arrested were his twin brother Mikael and another citizen. They both were charged but freed two days later.

Pashinian and his political allies have defended Minasian’s arrest, saying that the student assaulted the prime minister. Armenian opposition figures counter, however, that the church incident was the result of what they see as Pashinian’s provocative behavior. They claim that Pashinian ordered the arrest in a bid to intimidate disgruntled Armenians ahead of the June 7 parliamentary elections.

Pashinian has spent the past several weekends touring various parts of the country and talking to people on what amounted to election campaign trips. Some of those citizens caused him to lose his temper by openly denouncing his policies or complaining about his government’s track record.

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Mirzoyan has participated in the last four conferences held in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, speaking during panel discussions and holding bilateral meetings with his Turkish and Azerbaijani counterparts.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Tuesday on his decision to skip the upcoming Antalya Diplomacy Forum. According to the forum’s official website, one of Mirzoyan’s deputies, Vahan Kostanian, will be its sole Armenian participant this time around.

Ruben Rubinian, a parliament vice-speaker who has represented Yerevan in normalization talks with Ankara, confirmed that he too will not travel to Antalya later this week. He gave no reason for his absence.

“Why should I go there every time?” Rubinian told journalists.

Rubinian and Turkish envoy Serdar Kilic held several rounds of negotiations that resulted in the signing in 2022 of two bilateral agreements. One of those agreements calls for the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border for Armenian and Turkish diplomatic passport holders as well as citizens of third countries. Ankara has been reluctant to implement it so far. It has for decades made the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.

Turkish media reported late last year that Ankara is planning to partially open the border in March, ahead of Armenia’s parliamentary elections slated for June. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan mentioned the elections and praised Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in that context in January.

Armenian opposition leaders responded by accusing the Turkish government of meddling in Armenia’s internal affairs. Pashinian’s political allies insisted that Fidan did not endorse the Armenian leader.

Even before Fidan’s statement, Pashinian’s political opponents claimed that Turkey and Azerbaijan will go to great lengths to help his Civil Contract party win the polls. They have for years said that Pashinian is making unilateral concessions to the two Turkic allies in hopes of clinging to power. The premier’s political team denies this.

Gegham Manukian, an Armenian opposition lawmaker, claimed Pashinian’s government has finally realized that its high-level participation in the Antalya forum is “meaningless” in the absence of Turkey’s tangible “steps to end its hostile actions against Armenia.”

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Gohar Ghumashian is a senior member of Karapetian’s Strong Armenia party widely expected to be the main opposition contender in Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary elections. The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC) accused the young woman as well as another person of violating a legal ban on election-related benevolence.

The law-enforcement agency claimed that she handed out cash to one voter and promised “service on preferential terms” to another last month. It did not elaborate. In another statement issued later in the day, the ACC said it has asked a court to move Ghumashian to house arrest because she has three young children.

One of the children was born less than two months ago. Senior Strong Armenia figures emphasized this fact when they rushed to condemn Ghumashian’s arrest before the ACC revealed the charges levelled against her. They claimed that her “political persecution” is the result of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s knee-jerk reaction to a large crowd pulled by Karapetian’s party on Saturday.

“Another manifestation of Pashinian’s panic after the Big Rally,” Narek Karapetian, the tycoon’s nephew and right-hand man, said in a social media post. “Fearful of Samvel Karapetian, Pashinian sent law-enforcement officers to detain a breastfeeding mother of multiple children.”

“This is a consequence of our successful rally,” Gohar Meloyan, another senior Strong Armenian member, told reporters.

The rally held in Yerevan’s Liberty Square on Saturday featured Karapetian’s first video address to supporters since his arrest last June. He had issued only statements messages until then.

The 60-year-old tycoon, who was moved to house arrest in December, initially faced an accusation stemming from his criticism of Pashinian’s controversial attempts to depose Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Investigators also charged him with tax evasion, fraud and money laundering after he announced in July plans to challenge Pashinian in the 2026 elections.

Karapetian’s trial is scheduled to start on Wednesday. His lawyers said they will ask the presiding judge to release him from house arrest.

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