The lawyer, Artak Movsisian, said the 55-year-old woman living in the northwestern town of Akhurian was remanded in custody late last week on charges of hooliganism and a public call for violence after a screenshot of her message was circulated on social media by another person.
“The post that served as the basis for initiating the criminal proceedings is part of a private conversation — a message sent by one [social media] user to another,” Movsisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Although the correspondence was not public in nature, it was considered by the investigating body as public speech and, therefore, also a public call.”
Movsisian declined to identify his client. He said only that she is a supporter of the indicted billionaire Samvel Karapetian’s opposition movement. He also chose not to reveal the statement that landed the woman in trouble.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General and Investigative Committee declined to give details of the criminal case which Movsisian said will set a bad precedent for the rule of law and citizens’ privacy.
“It means that anyone can find themselves in this situation because of their private correspondence,” argued the lawyer.
Armenian prosecutors earlier did not deny reports that they are monitoring people posting angry comments about Pashinian on social media and have even ordered criminal investigations into some of them. The Yerevan daily Aravot reported in November a number of such orders and reader comments that prompted them. The investigated persons included an Armenian-born woman apparently living in the United States.
“You compare yourself too much to Christ, let’s crucify you as a nation, maybe that’s how we’ll get rid of you,” she commented below a Pashinian post.
NSS officers arrest pro-opposition podcasters Narek Samsonian (right) and Vazgen Saghatelian, November 13, 2025.
Three well-known critics of the Armenian government were indicted late last for insulting other senior officials. Aleksandr Kochubayev, an outspoken lawyer, was demonstratively arrested by masked security officers on October 16 the day after he denounced as “sons of a b*tch” law-enforcement and judicial officials involved the arrest of yet another Armenian bishop.
On November 13, two pro-opposition podcasters, Naren Samsonian and Vazgen Saghatelian, were arrested for verbally abusing parliament speaker Alen Simonian in response to his personal insults. Saghatelian remains in prison while Samsonian was moved to house arrest late last week after undergoing surgery in a Yerevan hospital.
No political allies or other supporters of Pashinian are known to have been prosecuted for offending or voicing threats against opposition politicians. In late 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. Law-enforcement authorities have not charged or even interrogated him.
