The official, Menua Hovsepian, was first taken into custody on August 17 following the arrest of Goris Mayor Arush Arushanian. The two men affiliated with the main opposition Hayastan alliance are facing criminal charges which they both reject as politically motivated.
Arushanian remains behind bars despite his and his political allies’ landslide victory in a municipal election held in Goris on October 17. The election outcome is widely regarded as a serious setback for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and his Civil Contract party.
A local court granted Hovsepian bail and ordered his release three days before the vote. The Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in what the vice-mayor’s lawyer, Armen Melkonian, denounced as a “political decision” aimed at intimidating other opposition members.
Melkonian argued that his client posted bail worth 30 million drams ($63,000) and did not obstruct the investigation into the high-profile case after his release.
“Thirty million drams is not 30 cents; it’s a serious guarantee that a person won’t do anything wrong,” Melkonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Hovsepian is accused of misusing public funds and coercing local residents to campaign for Hayastan in the run-up to the June 20 parliamentary elections. His lawyer insisted that the charges are baseless.
Goris and surrounding villages make up a major community of Armenia’s Syunik province bordering districts southwest of Nagorno-Karabakh that were retaken by Azerbaijan during and shortly after last year’s war. The mayors of virtually all provincial towns and villages blamed Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in the war and demanded his resignation.
Some of them, including Arushanian, encouraged supporters to disrupt Pashinian’s visits to the region. Four Syunik mayors were arrested shortly after the June elections. One of them was freed late last month.