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.”
