A special police squad broke into the representation’s compound and seized the limousine on June 21 one week after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian again threatened to crack down on Shahramanian. Pashinian accused him of encouraging Karabakh refugees to participate in antigovernment protests in Yerevan.
Armenia’s Investigative Committee claimed that the car was impounded as part of a continuing criminal investigation into Shahramanian’s bodyguard and driver, Ashot Danielian. The latter was arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking but freed without charge in February. The car was already impounded, searched and returned to the Karabakh leader at the time.
Shahramanian’s lawyer, Roman Yeritsian, said on Tuesday that the Investigative Committee is now refusing to return the car on the grounds that it is being examined in another criminal inquiry. He dismissed the official explanation as a lame excuse.
The law-enforcement agency declined to give RFE/RL’s Armenian Service any information about the new inquiry ostensibly launched by it. Its spokesman again insisted that the police raid and the resulting seizure of the car were not politically motivated.
Yeritsian claimed the opposite, saying that his client is punished for supporting the anti-Pashinian protest movement led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian. Later in June, Galstanian visited the Karabakh mission to express solidarity with Shahramanian and give him the keys of his own car. Shahramanian has been using that car since then.
In May, the authorities indicted and detained the exiled mayors of Stepanakert and two other Karabakh towns who also signaled support for Galstanian-led protests. They all were set free this month while remaining under surveillance and not being cleared of fraud and forgery charges denied by them.
In a June 24 statement, the leaders of Karabakh’s main political groups also exiled in Armenia accused Pashinian’s government of unleashing repressions and waging a smear campaign against Karabakh Armenians who took refuge in the country following Azerbaijan’s recapture of the region in September 2023.
