The short video posted by the 70-year-old Gharib Babayan on Facebook showed the foreigners, later identified as Iranian nationals, signing an Azerbaijani song about Karabakh in apparent celebration of Azerbaijan’s recapture of the region in 2023. Babayan commented angrily on the footage shared by many other Facebook users and media outlets, branding Armenia’s leaders as “corrupt scumbags.”
Babayan was arrested and charged on February 1 with inciting “hatred, intolerance and hostility towards the authorities and police officers of Armenia.” Hundreds of furious critics of the Armenian government rallied outside a Yerevan court of first instance in the following hours to demand his immediate release.
The court refused to allow investigators to hold the Karabakh Armenian in pretrial detention. But it also banned him from speaking publicly about the case pending investigation.
Armenia’s Court of Appeals struck down the gag order. Babayan’s lawyer, Abgar Poghosian, on Friday portrayed the decision as further proof that his client did not spread hate speech. He again described the charges brought against Babayan as politically motivated.
Some critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian have claimed that he ordered the criminal proceedings to discourage protests against more Armenian concessions to Azerbaijan planned by him. An opposition parliamentarian, Kristine Vartanian, challenged Pashinian last month to explain why Armenian law-enforcement authorities did not investigate the scandalous celebration.
“The public must not be unsettled by such stupid scenes,” replied Pashinian. He claimed that his foes may have paid the Iranians to sing the song and filmed them in order to undermine Armenia’s relationship with Iran.
The Iranian ambassador in Yerevan, Mehdi Sobhani, condemned the video when he spoke to journalists on February 6.
“Those who speak with racist and nationalist slogans neither represent the Iranian people nor express the official position of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.