According to Armenia’s Investigative Committee, Ashot Pashinian claims that the outspoken woman, Gayane Hakobian, tricked him into getting in her car after he ran into her and several other parents of fallen soldiers on a street in Yerevan on Wednesday.
Pashinian told investigators that Hakobian “displayed inappropriate behavior” as she talked about Armenian losses suffered during the war and drove him to the city’s Yerablur military cemetery. The young man jumped out of the car moments before being hit by another vehicle that carried several other parents, the law-enforcement agency said in a statement.
Hakobian was taken to a police station in Yerevan along with three other parents. The police freed the latter but placed Hakobian under arrest late on Wednesday pending a preliminary inquiry into what the Investigative Committee described as a possible kidnapping attempt.
Under Armenian law, the committee has to formally charge the woman or set her free by the end of Saturday. She remained in police custody as of Thursday evening.
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his son Ashot, May 26, 2018
Hakobian’s lawyer, Vahan Hovannisian, categorically denied the kidnapping claims, saying that they are not substantiated by any factual evidence. Hovannisian demanded that his client and Pashinian Jr. be interrogated together.
The lawyer also said that Hakobian has gone on hunger strike despite suffering from serious health problems.
Ashot Pashinian could not be reached for comment. He suffered a leg injury during the incident, according to the Haykakan Zhamanak daily controlled by the prime minister’s family.
Meanwhile, a group of other persons who lost their sons during the six-week war gathered outside a Yerevan detention center to show support for Hakobian.
“How could a woman, who had given birth to a hero, use force against a 23-year-old guy or say something bad to him?” one of them, Vahid Sahakian, told reporters.
“I think they fabricated this case to shut us up,” he claimed. “But they can’t shut us up because our fight is just.”
Armenia - Police detain the mother of an Armenian soldier killed in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh at the Yerablur Military Pantheon, Yerevan, September 21, 2022.
The detained woman and several dozen other parents blame Nikol Pashinian for the deaths of their sons as well as at least 3,800 other Armenian soldiers killed in action. They have set up a non-governmental organization, named the Call of Sons, to campaign for the prime minister’s prosecution on relevant charges.
Last September, the same parents gathered at the main entrance to the Yerablur Military Pantheon to try to prevent Pashinian from laying a wreath there on the occasion of Armenia’s Independence Day. Riot police violently dispersed them. At least 37 grief-stricken men and women were dragged away, forced into police vehicles and detained in dramatic scenes that caused uproar in the country.
Armenian civic groups strongly condemned the use of force and demanded the resignation of Vahe Ghazarian, the then chief of the national police who was promoted and appointed by Pashinian as interior minister in January.
Ghazarian ordered an internal inquiry into his officers’ actions at Yerablur. None of them has been fired or subjected to disciplinary action, however. Nor has the Investigative Committee indicted any policemen in a separate, criminal investigation launched after the Yerablur crackdown.