A lawyer representing Albert Bazeyan said on Thursday that a court in Yerevan has decided not to further extend the detention period, which expires on March 23, and to place him under house arrest instead.
Bazeyan was arrested in September along with seven members of an obscure militant group called Khachakirner (Crusaders). Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) said at the time that it searched the group’s offices and confiscated weapons, ammunition as well as electronic jamming devices kept there. The NSS has still not divulged any details of their alleged coup plot which it claims to have foiled.
Bazeyan denies the accusations brought against him. According to his lawyer Georgi Melikian, they are solely based on incriminating testimony given by another indicted suspect, Armen Harutiunian.
Melikian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the testimony proved baseless when Bazeyan and Harutiunian were brought face to face and jointly interrogated. The lawyer did not elaborate.
A well-known veteran of the 1991-1994 war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Bazeyan had served as mayor of Yerevan over two decades ago and challenged then President Robert Kocharian in the following years. He retired from active politics in the late 2000s. The 67-year-old returned to the limelight a year ago, criticizing Pashinian in regular interviews with some pro-opposition media outlets.
Bazeyan’s arrest came amid angry antigovernment protests in Yerevan sparked by Azerbaijan’s September military offensive and resulting recapture of Karabakh. Neither he nor Khachakirner were involved in the protests.
