Artsakh President Summoned for Questioning, Offices in Yerevan Raided

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Armenian law-enforcement authorities summoned Samvel Shahramanyan for questioning and impounded a car used by him on Friday one week after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan threatened to crack down on Nagorno-Karabakh’s exiled leader.

Videos posted on social media showed masked officers of a special police squad smashing the iron gates of Karabakh’s permanent representation in Yerevan to enter it and seize the limousine driven by Shahramanyan’s bodyguard.

They did not produce a court warrant, Shahramanyan’s lawyer, Roman Yeritsyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He called the police actions illegal and politically motivated.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee denied the claims. A spokesman for the law-enforcement agency said the car was impounded as part of a continuing criminal investigation into the bodyguard and driver, Ashot Danielyan.

In February this year, Danielyan was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking and freed without charge three days later. According to Yeritsyan, the car was already impounded, searched and returned to him at the time.

Investigators tried to seize it again on June 7. They gave up after a four-hour argument with Shahramanyan aides who insisted that they cannot do that without court permission. Yeritsyan said the compound was raided again on Friday as the Karabakh president was about to visit the Investigative Committee to be questioned as a witness in the case.

On June 14, Pashinyan accused unnamed Karabakh leaders of encouraging Karabakh Armenian refugees to participate in antigovernment protests in Yerevan and threatened them with serious consequences. The threats came the day after Shahramanyan pushed back against Pashinyan’s allegations that Karabakh forces did not fight back last September’s Azerbaijani offensive because the authorities in Stepanakert as well as the Armenian opposition wanted the region’s population to flee to Armenia to topple him.

At least 198 soldiers and 25 civilian residents of Karabakh were killed during the 24-hour hostilities. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry acknowledged around 200 combat deaths among its military personnel involved in the operation. Baku stopped the operation and allowed the region’s entire population to flee to Armenia after Shahramanyan’s administration agreed to disband the Karabakh army.

Shahramanyan on June 13 also criticized Armenian riot police for using “disproportionate force” against the antigovernment protesters led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan. What is more, he declared that the Karabakh refugees have a “legal and moral right” to participate in peaceful demonstrations because “they are also citizens of Armenia.”

The Armenian authorities indicted last month the exiled mayors of Stepanakert and two other Karabakh towns who signaled support for Galstanyan’s protest movement. One of them is in jail while the two others under house arrest on charges of fraud and forgery denied by them.

Yeritsyan said that the criminal cases are government retribution for Karabakh Armenians’ participation in the protests aimed at forcing Pashinyan to resign. “They are trying to tell us to know our place,” added the lawyer.