Avetik Chalabian was first arrested on May 13 on charges of trying to pay university students to participate in anti-government demonstrations in Yerevan. He went on trial on July 26 and was released from prison the following day because of the expiry of his detention period.
Although prosecutors did not ask the judge presiding over the trial to extend the detention, he decided to send Chalabian back to jail on August 3. Chalabian’s lawyers challenged the decision in the higher court, asking it to release their client on bail. The prosecutors did not object to the request.
The court set the bail amount at 15 million drams ($37,000). The oppositionist’s family and legal team scrambled to raise the sizable sum after a Court of Appeals judge, Ruzanna Barseghian, announced the decision in the evening.
Barseghian was scheduled to rule on the appeal at noon. Commenting on the delay, one of the defense lawyers, Varazdat Harutiunian, suggested that she resisted government pressure to keep Chalabian under arrest.
The charges leveled against him are based on leaked audio of short fragments of his conversation with the head of the student council of the Armenian National Agrarian University. Chalabian’s lawyers say that the recording was doctored by the authorities. They have repeatedly demanded the release of full audio of the conversation.
Chalabian, who leads a small opposition party, has also accused the authorities of forcing his younger brother Ara to resign from Armenia’s Central Bank because of his political activities.
Ara Chalabian headed the bank’s Department of Corporate Services and Development until announcing his resignation in late July. He gave no reason for his exit.
Armenian news websites claimed earlier in July that the bank chairman, Martin Galstian, told Ara Chalabian to quit, citing an order from Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian. The Central Bank and Pashinian’s office did not confirm or refute those reports.