The two men, Mourad Papazian and Massis Abrahamian, lead the pan-Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party’s chapters in France and the Netherlands respectively. They were deported from Armenia on their arrival at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport in July 2022.
The Armenian government said afterwards that Papazian was denied entry to the country because of organizing an angry demonstration against Pashinian’s June 2021 visit to France. It said the protesters threw “various objects” at Pashinian’s motorcade when it drove through Paris. Papazian, who is also the co-chairman of an umbrella structure representing France’s influential Armenian community, denied any involvement in that protest.
The government never explained the entry bans for Abrahamian as well as at three other Dashnaktsutyun activists.
Dashnaktsutyun, which is a key member of Armenia’s main opposition alliance, strongly condemned the bans and accused Pashinian of seeking to silence his vocal critics in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora.
All five blacklisted activists have challenged the authorities’ refusal to let them visit Armenia in local courts. In separate rulings handed down in recent days, the Administrative Court ordered the country’s National Security Service (NSS) to remove Papazian and Abrahamian from its list of “undesirable” foreign nationals.
The NSS declined to clarify on Thursday whether it will appeal against the rulings. Ruben Melikian, a lawyer representing Papazian and Abrahamian, suggested that it will likely file such appeals.
“But I still harbor small hope that the NSS will try to find a solution to this matter after looking into it,” Melikian told a news conference.
During the court hearings, the security service did not present any grounds for the travel bans, he said, adding that this is the reason why the Administrative Court overturned them.