Tonoyan was arrested two years ago in a criminal investigation into supplies of allegedly outdated rockets to Armenia’s armed forces. The National Security Service charged him, two generals and an arms dealer with fraud and embezzlement that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($5.9 million). All four suspects, among them former army chief of staff Artak Davtian, have denied the accusations during the trial that began in January 2022.
The Anti-Corruption Court ruled to keep Tonoyan under arrest one day after a three-hour hearing on yet another petition to free him submitted by his lawyer. The lawyer, Avetik Karapetian, was not optimistic about his client’s release when he spoke to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service after the hearing.
“It would be naïve to expect a just decision from the court given its decisions made before,” said Karapetian.
This and other courts had rejected at least five such petitions, citing witness tampering concerns expressed by prosecutors. Karapetian dismissed those concerns, arguing that all witnesses in the case have already testified during the ongoing trial behind the closed doors.
The lawyer said that Tonoyan, who was sacked in the wake of the disastrous 2020 war with Azerbaijan, remains behind bars for political reasons. But he stopped short of explicitly accusing the Armenian government of ordering law-enforcement authorities to fabricate the charges.
Tonoyan likewise claimed shortly before the start of the trial that he is being made a scapegoat for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. He he too avoided pointing the finger at Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
In early August, Tonoyan agreed to testify before an ad hoc parliamentary commission tasked with examining the causes of the defeat. The two opposition blocs represented in the National Assembly have been boycotting the work of the commission. They say that it was set up last year to whitewash Pashinian’s wartime incompetence and disastrous decision making.
Tonoyan called for an end to the opposition boycott when he appeared before the commission made up of only pro-government lawmakers. Some opposition figures and other critics of the government scoffed at the appeal, saying that the ex-minister is desperate to get the authorities to set him free.