Another Karabakh Armenian Arrested Over Anti-Pashinian Protests

Citing a wiretapped phone conversation mistranslated and broadcast by state television, Armenian law-enforcement authorities have arrested a Nagorno-Karabakh man on charges of paying fellow refugees to attend ongoing antigovernment protests in Yerevan.

An Armenian court remanded the 29-year-old man, Narek Tevosian, in pre-trial custody on Wednesday night a few hours after he was detained and indicted by the Investigative Committee.

The case against Tevosian is based on the audio of a phone conversation between two men speaking in the distinct Karabakh dialect of the Armenian language. Armenian Public Television aired it earlier on Wednesday. It did not say how it obtained the audio clearly recorded in breach of the law.

According to the government-controlled broadcaster’s report posted on the Investigative Committee website, the Karabakh men complained about the modest amount of money offered to them for attending the demonstrations.

Tevosian’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, and other people familiar with the Karabakh dialect disputed that claim, saying that the precise subject of the wiretapped call is not clear and the recording does not corroborate the accusations. They also said that Public Television incorrectly translated some parts of the conversation. Melikian claimed that it did so deliberately.

“One of the men tells the other, ‘Yesterday I bought a pair of shoes for 2,200 drams ($6), I had not worn shoes worth less than 40,000 drams,’” the opposition-linked lawyer told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But they translated it [into literary Armenian] as, ‘They paid me 2,200 drams yesterday. Had I ever agreed to do such a thing for less than 40,000 drams?’”

Public Television, which is run by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s loyalists, acknowledged the “typo” and apologized for it on Thursday.

Nevertheless, the Investigative Committee stood by the accusations even if it appeared to have removed the reference to the Public Television report from its statement on Tevosian’s arrest. The law-enforcement agency insisted that the suspect paid at least four persons 5,000 drams each for every attendance of the anti-Pashinian rallies held by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian.

According to Melikian, another piece of evidence presented by investigators to the court, is a notebook listing the names of various people and the amounts of money paid to them. The lawyer said that it has nothing to do with the protests because most of the listed individuals are Indian migrant workers with whom Tevosian “did some business.” He insisted that his client is prosecuted for political reasons.

Pashinian’s political team seems concerned about the participation of disgruntled Karabakh Armenians in the protests aimed at forcing the prime minister to resign. Some of its surrogates have openly warned the refugees to stay away from Galstanian’s opposition-backed movement.

The exiled mayors of Stepanakert and the northern Karabakh town of Martakert were arrested on corruption charges late last month after signaling support for the outspoken archbishop. They as well as another Karabakh mayor, who was placed under house arrest, deny the charges. Artak Beglarian, a former Karabakh premier, condemned the arrests, accusing the Armenian authorities of trying to “intimidate and punish” Karabakh Armenians supporting the protest leader.