The Investigative Committee claims that the two members and one supporter of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) paid residents of southern Ararat province to attend anti-government rallies last year. It has not specified the amount of the alleged bribes.
The activists and the opposition party reject the accusations as politically motivated. Two of the suspects were set free while the other, Dashnaktsutyun member Garnik Manukian, remanded in pre-trial custody over the weekend.
During a search conducted in Manukian’s home, the Investigative Committee found and confiscated a handwritten list of Ararat residents containing their personal data and political preferences. The law-enforcement agency presented this as evidence of the alleged crimes committed by the oppositionists.
“Such a list could be found in anyone’s home, especially if that person has some organizational functions,” Artsvik Minasian, a Dashnaktsutyun leader, said on Monday. “It has nothing to do with the crime alleged by the investigating body.”
The investigators also searched the homes of the two others suspects as well as Simon Simonian, the head of Dashnaktsutyun’s governing body in Armenia, but did not confiscate any documents there. Lawyers representing these oppositionists pointed out that the arrests were made several months after the start of the criminal investigation.
“For six months, no [investigative] action was taken, nobody was summoned [for interrogation,]” Simonian’s lawyer, Sergei Harutiunian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “Then all of a sudden they carried out the searches and arrested three the three men at dawn.”
Dashnaktsutyun is a key member of the main opposition Hayastan alliance headed by former President Robert Kocharian. It was at the forefront of last year’s demonstrations organized in Yerevan by Hayastan and another opposition bloc.
The daily protests were sparked by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s calls for an unpopular peace deal with Azerbaijan.