The 31-year-old mayor, Arush Arushanian, received a suspended six-month prison sentence for abuse of power and assault at the end of his high-profile trial. A local court at the same time cleared him of other, more serious charges, rejecting prosecutors’ demands to sentence him to nine years in prison.
Arushanian is one of the four heads of major communities of Syunik province who were arrested shortly after the June 2021 parliamentary elections on various charges rejected by them as politically motivated. They all demanded Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s resignation before joining the main opposition Hayastan alliance formed by former President Robert Kocharian in the run-up to the snap polls.
The court cleared Arushanian of trying to buy votes. Law-enforcement authorities claim that he ordered the head of a village close to Goris, Lusine Avetian, to provide financial aid to local residents promising to vote for Hayastan.
Arushanian strongly denies that, saying that the poverty benefits approved by the local council were allocated on a regular basis and had nothing to do with the general elections.
The accusation was based in large measure on Avetian’s incriminating pre-trial testimony against Arushanian. The village chief retracted it when the trial that began in November.
The Syunik court also banned Arushanian from holding public office for the next five years. His lawyer, Erik Aleskanian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that he will appeal against the verdict. Aleksanian insisted that his client can continue to serve as Goris mayor pending a higher court’s ruling on the appeal.
Arushanian was reelected for a second term as a result of a municipal election held last October three months after his arrest. A bloc led by him defeated Pashinian’s Civil Contract party by a wide margin.
The mayor reportedly received a hero’s welcome from his supporters in Goris after walking free in the courtroom. He told journalists that he will continue to “fight for the homeland” and its “internal enemies.”
Two of the three other jailed Syunik community heads, who were elected to the Armenian parliament on the Hayastan ticket, were set free in December after the Constitutional Court deemed their arrest illegal.
The third community chief, Manvel Paramazian, was freed in October only to be arrested again in February after the Court of Appeals overturned a Syunik judge’s decision to grant him bail. The judge was also arrested on the same day on charges which he rejects as government retribution.
