Pashinian was confronted by the 21-year-old man, Davit Avetisian, as he strolled in the city center together with his family on Sunday. Avetisian was detained on the spot and remained under arrest on Tuesday.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee said that it is conducting a criminal inquiry into an act of “hooliganism” that took the form of verbal abuse and other “inappropriate phrases.” It gave no other details of the incident.
Avetisian’s lawyer, Ara Papikian, said the criminal proceedings are based on a police officer’s claim that his client described Pashinian as a “traitor” and “scumbag.” He claimed that the police are not telling the whole truth about the incident and that Avetisian shouted the insults while being choked by one of the officers.
“Davit approached him not to call him a traitor,” Papikian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “He said, ‘You will answer for my fallen friend and other guys.’ They toppled him to the ground … only then he uttered those words.”
Avetisian appeared to refer to Armenians killed during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposition leaders and other government critics blame Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war that left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead. They have also denounced as treasonous his apparent readiness to agree to the restoration of Azerbaijan’s control over Karabakh.
Alen Simonian, the Armenian parliament speaker and a close Pashinian associate, was likewise branded a “traitor” by an opposition activist as he visited a popular dining area of central Yerevan in April. The Canadian-Armenian activist, Garen Megerdichian, said Simonian ordered his bodyguards to overpower him before spitting in his face. Simonian did not deny that.
Avetisian was not formally charged with hooliganism as of Tuesday afternoon. Under Armenian law, law-enforcement authorities must indict or free him before Thursday.
“Insults were decriminalized in our country long ago. I think this is the reason why they still can’t charge Davit,” said Avetisian’s lawyer.
The arrested man is a son of Varuzhan Avetisian, who led an armed group that seized a police base in Yerevan in 2016 to demand that then President Serzh Sarkisian free the jailed leader of their radical opposition movement and step down.
The three dozen gunmen, who took police officers and medical personnel hostage, laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security forces which left three police officers dead. All but two of them were released from custody shortly after Sarkisian was toppled in the 2018 “velvet revolution” led by Pashinian.
Varuzhan Avetisian and six other key members of the group called Sasna Tsrer were sent back to jail in May 2022 after Armenia’s Court of Cassation upheld prison sentences handed down to them by a lower court. Avetisian received a 7-year jail term.
