Armenian court rejects Security Council Secretary Simonyan’s defamation suit against opposition MP
19 October 2026 (Updated: about 4 hours ago)•2 min read
Armenia’s court of appeals dismissed a defamation lawsuit by Security Council Secretary Alen Simonyan against opposition Strong Armenia MP Edgar Ghazaryan, according to the Datalex court database.
This is not the first time Simonyan has taken his critiques to the court. Simonyan has filed a series of defamation suits against critics and media outlets when he was parliamentary speaker in the previous parliament. In 2023, he sued the news website MediaHub.am over a report that the government had signed a deal with his brother’s company without a tender. In October 2025, he filed a suit against the Oragir.news website, seeking ֏800,000 ($2,200) in compensation over a street-interview video recalling an incident in which he allegedly ordered security staff to seize a passerby.
The suit concerned a video published on 9 March by the outlet 168.am, titled ‘Family corruption: A thematic conversation with Edgar Ghazaryan’. The reports do not say which statements in the video Simonyan contested. Simonyan had asked the court to order Ghazaryan to post a retraction on Facebook for at least five working days. The text was to be headlined ‘I, Edgar Ghazaryan, slandered Alen Simonyan’. He also sought ֏2 million ($5,500) in compensation and ֏560,000 ($1,500) in legal costs.
Ghazaryan responded to the court decision on Facebook.
‘The Republic of Armenia also benefited from all this, receiving ֏80,000 ($220). I hope that Alen Simonyan exercises his right to appeal the verdict to the Civil Court of Appeal of Armenia — so that he may lose there as well and pay an additional state duty to the state’, he wrote. Simonyan did not respond to the decision or Ghazaryan’s post.
Earlier this year, Simonyan sued former President Robert Kocharyan, seeking over ֏2 million ($5,500) over an ‘offensive statement’ made at a press briefing on 29 January.
Not all of his suits have failed. In a separate case, a court ordered journalist Ani Gevorgyan to retract her claims about Simonyan and pay him AMD ֏150,000 ($400)
Ghazaryan and Simonyan have crossed paths in court before when in January 2024, Simonyan sued Angela Tovmasyan, editor of the website hayeli.am, after she spoke at a press conference by Ghazaryan. She said that Simonyan had in the past ‘run under the feet’ of businessperson Khachatur Sukiasyan. He demanded an apology and ֏1 million ($2,300)
