Although Armenia’s Investigative Committee implicitly claimed to have foiled such attacks, only one of the arrested young men, Andranik Chamichian, was formally charged with “preparation of terrorism.” A Yerevan court allowed the law-enforcement agency to hold the 18-year-old Chamichian and another suspect in pre-trial detention. The latter was charged with illegal arms possession, rather than terrorism, after investigators reportedly found a hand grenade in his apartment.
Since the Investigative Committee did not indict the five other suspects, it had to free them on Sunday. Like Chamichian, they are members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a major opposition party.
In a statement, Dashnaktsutyun portrayed their release as further proof that the arrests were part of the Armenian authorities’ ongoing crackdown on the opposition, the Armenian Apostolic Church and other critics resisting their plans to make more concessions to Azerbaijan.
“As we noted in our previous statements, the allegations of terrorism were baseless from the outset,” it said. “Carrying a clear political context and purpose, they were intended to mislead and intimidate the public.”
One of the freed men is the son of Gegham Manukian, a veteran Dashnaktsutyun figure and parliamentarian. Law-enforcement officers searched their Yerevan apartment before arresting Taron Manukian on July 10. They also confiscated the lawmaker’s mobile phone.
“They didn’t find any legally or illegally owned weapons,” Taron’s lawyer, Mkrtich Davtian, told reporters on Monday.
Several other Dashnaktsutyun members were arrested on June 25 along with Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian on charges of plotting to topple the government through “terrorist acts.” Artur Sargsian, another Dashnaktsutyun parliamentarian, was arrested and charged as part of the same criminal case on July 8. They all deny the accusations.
Political allies of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian seized upon the subsequent arrests of the seven men to again accuse the Armenian opposition of seeking a violent regime change. One of them, a pro-government lawmaker, went as far as to call on the government to ban Dashnaktsutyun.
The terrorism charges levelled against Chamichian stem from his possession of an electronic detonator and related items found in his home. The young activist’s lawyers again said on Monday that he kept those objects for playing “strikeball,” a sport involving simulated combat. They cannot be used for committing terrorist acts, insisted the lawyers.