The Investigative Committee said that Spartak Ghukasian was charged with extortion. It did not give any details of the accusation.
Ghukasian Jr. was reportedly ambushed by law-enforcement officers as he took one of his four children to a local kindergarten.
Vartan Ghukasian, who is a vocal critic of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, was quick to denounce the criminal case as politically motivated. He said that it was opened 18 months ago and revolves around the alleged misappropriation of just 90,000 drams ($234).
Ghukasian claimed that people not named by him warned him of Spartak’s arrest after his son attended recently a court hearing in the ongoing trial of the Gyumri-based Archbishop Mikael Ajapahian accused of calling for a violent regime change.
“Frankly, I didn’t believe them. But today it became clear that we are dealing with very vindictive people,” he told a news conference.
The Gyumri mayor went on to suggest that his son’s arrest is aimed at forcing him to resign or pledge loyalty to Pashinian’s government.
“You can’t break me up with this,” he said, apparently appealing to Pashinian. “The more you do things like this, the stronger we will become. You can’t run a country by having people arrested.”
Ghukasian became mayor in April this year after four opposition groups collectively defeated Pashinian’s ruling Civil Contract party in a local election. The 64-year-old had already governed Gyumri from 1999 to 2012.
The March 30 election took place as a result of last October’s mysterious resignations of Gyumri’s previous mayor, Vardges Samsonian, and city council members representing a local political bloc led by local businessman Samvel Balasanian. The resignations followed criminal charges brought against Balasanian and strongly denied by him.