Armen Charchian ran for the parliament on the ticket of the main opposition Hayastan alliance while heading Yerevan’s Izmirlian Medical Center owned by the Armenian Apostolic Church. He was prosecuted after a non-governmental organization publicized a leaked audio recording of his pre-election meeting with hospital personnel.
Charchian told them that they must vote in the snap elections or risk a different “attitude” by the hospital management. He was charged with coercion of voters and arrested three days after the vote won by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party.
Both Charchian and the opposition bloc led by former President Robert Kocharian rejected the accusations as politically motivated. The doctor insisted that he only urged hospital employees to cast ballots. He and two other Hayastan figures also arrested in the wake of the elections were set free a few months later thanks to being elected to the National Assembly.
Charchian’s lawyer, Erik Aleksanian, said he will appeal against the three-and-a-half year sentence and insist on his client’s acquittal. Aleksanian said that the controversial phrase uttered by Charchian at the 2021 meeting was taken out of context and that the doctor made clear at the end of the same speech that his subordinates refusing to go to the polls will not face any “negative consequences.”
Charchian, 64, again became the executive director the Izmirlian hospital last October after resigning from the parliament and thus enabling Kocharian’s arrested son Levon to take up the vacant seat and be released from custody.
Kocharian Jr. was charged with assaulting riot police during September 2023 anti-government protests in Yerevan. He strongly denies the accusations, saying that he himself was beaten up by security forces.