The 30-year-old activist, Samvel Vartanian, shouted abuse at the lawmaker, Hakob Aslanian, and held him responsible for government policies after running into him on a public bus in Yerevan in April 2024. The two men bitterly argued during the incident filmed by Vartanian on his mobile phone. The latter was arrested shortly afterwards.
Vartanian claimed to have been assaulted by masked men while being transferred from a police station to Armenia’s Investigative Committee for interrogation. He said that two police officers escorting him stopped their car and went out of it before the unknown men dragged him out of it and beat him up.
Law-enforcement authorities launched a criminal investigation into the alleged beating. But they have still not charged anyone, including the two policemen.
Vartanian was put on trial and kept under house arrest for over three months. A Yerevan court fined the outspoken activist 750,000 drams ($1,900) on April 14 after convicting him of “hooliganism” but clearing him of “incitement of hatred.”
Taguhi Tovmasian, an opposition lawmaker, pressed Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian on the lack of concrete results in the torture investigation during a meeting held in the Armenian parliament on Friday.
“They put him on his knees and humiliated him,” said Tovmasian. “They pulled down his pants, spat at him, beat and tortured him. What else needs to be investigated? Why have those bandits operating in Yerevan not been identified for more than a year?”
Vardapetian claimed that investigators cannot prosecute anyone because they are still awaiting the results of two forensic tests conducted at the site of the alleged torture.
“Only after receiving their results will it be possible to have a clear idea and answer questions,” she said.
But it emerged moments later that those results are already available. Vardapetian said she will comment after look into them.
According to Vartanian’s lawyer, Ruben Melikian, the findings out of the tests were submitted to investigators in February. He could not disclose them, saying only that they “don’t contradict our theory.”
Melikian also insisted that even without the test results the prosecutors had sufficient grounds to at least indict the two policemen who escorted his client.
“I consider this a delay tactic,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.