An Armenian lawyer has been detained after making a social media post criticising law enforcement and judicial officials involved in the arrest of a senior bishop, deepening concerns over the shrinking space for dissent in Armenia.
Masked officers of the National Security Service (NSS) detained Aleksandr Kochubayev on Thursday in central Yerevan, reportedly pulling him from his car and taking him away shortly after a court hearing in the ongoing trial of Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and 17 of his supporters, who face coup-related charges. Kochubayev represents one of the defendants in the case.
Earlier that day, Kochubayev published an angry post on Facebook condemning the officials who oversaw the arrest of Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan and another priest on 15 October. In the post, he accused investigators, prosecutors, and judges of acting on political orders amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s ongoing confrontation with the Armenian Apostolic Church. He referred to them as ‘sons of a bitch’ who had ‘sold their souls to the devil’.
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Kochubayev was charged with making ‘defamatory’ statements harmful to the officials’ ‘rights and legitimate interests’ and was remanded in pre-trial detention overnight by a Yerevan court judge Masis Melkonyan, known for authorising the arrests of government critics.
Kochubayev’s lawyer Arayik Nersisyan has dismissed the accusations as unfounded.
‘My colleague simply evaluated the actions of law-enforcement bodies’, said Nersisyan. ‘There was no dissemination of defamatory information’.
Kochubayev’s arrest has drawn condemnation from the Armenian Chamber of Advocates and Human Rights Defender Anahit Manasyan. While calling the lawyer’s language offensive, Manasyan said his arrest was ‘unacceptable’.
‘According to international standards, only the most serious forms of unlawful speech can justify criminal liability, and even then, imprisonment should be an exceptional measure’, her office said in a statement
The incident follows a series of arrests of clergy and government critics in recent weeks, as tensions between Pashinyan’s administration and the Armenian Apostolic Church continue to escalate.
