The 36-year-old man, Mher Khachatrian, lambasted Investigative Committee chief Artur Poghosian in a social media post that followed the latter’s February 1 interview with Armenian Public Television. Poghosian spoke about controversial criminal proceedings against then imprisoned Archbishops Mikael Ajapahian and Bagrat Galstanian highly critical of Pashinian.
Khachatrian charged that Poghosian is an “unprincipled clown” who “proved that he serves not the law and the people but the whims of a maniacal antichrist.” The Anti-Corruption Committee (ACC), another law-enforcement agency, charged him with spreading “defamatory information” about the work of Poghosian and other investigators.
Khachatrian continued to strongly deny the accusations when he went on trial in Gyumri in April. The local judge presiding over the trial, Arpine Shtoyan, stopped it this month on the grounds that the ACC’s 220-page indictment does not specify “the site of the alleged crime.” Citing the Armenian Code of Procedural Justice, she said the case must therefore be heard by a court in Yerevan, which is home to the ACC headquarters.
A judge of the Yerevan court is scheduled to hold the first preliminary hearing on Wednesday. Khachatrian said official notices sent to him show that the judge has petitioned a higher tribunal to send the case back to Gyumri.
“In my view, the judges want to get rid of the case because of their busyness and the inadequacy of the case,” the Gyumri man told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Tuesday. “I just don’t know how they are going to find me guilty.”
Khachatrian, who is a staunch supporter of the Gyumri-based Archbishop Ajapahian, said that at any rate he will continue to protest his innocence and accuse the authorities of trying to stifle dissent in the country.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and the head of the Investigative Committee, Artur Poghosian, at a meeting in Yerevan, October 8, 2025.
Khachatrian is not the only person prosecuted for their anti-government statements made on social media. Armenian prosecutors did not deny late last year reports that they are monitoring people posting angry comments about Pashinian and other state officials and have ordered criminal investigations into some of them. The total number of such criminal cases remains unknown.
In February, a young Yerevan resident was arrested for posting an offensive video about Pashinian on the TikTok platform. Another Pashinian critic, a 55-year-old woman from the northwestern town of Akhurian, was prosecuted for making a disparaging statement about the prime minister and his family in a private message sent online.
No political allies or other supporters of Pashinian are known to have been prosecuted for offending or voicing threats against opposition politicians. In December, one government loyalist publicly called for the murder of Catholicos Garegin II, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church whom Pashinian has been trying to depose. He was never prosecuted.
