The 48-year-old man, Vartan Ghukasian, is a former police officer who emigrated to the United States years ago. He has since attracted large audiences on YouTube with his hard-hitting and opinionated comments on political developments in Armenia. He has commonly used extreme profanities to attack both Armenia’s current rulers and their mainstream political opponents in his videos.
In early 2023, Armenian law-enforcement authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Ghukasian and arrested his associates in Armenia on charges of blackmail, extortion and fraud denied by them. That did not prevent Ghukasian from helping Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s party install its candidate as mayor of Yerevan as a result of a municipal election held in September 2023.
In February this year, Ghukasian was arrested in the U.S. state of Nevada for a violation of U.S. immigration laws. According to his Yerevan-based lawyer, Levon Baghdasarian, a court in Las Vegas ruled ordered his deportation from the United States late last week while rejecting an extradition demand from Armenia.
“The court ruled that Vartan Ghukasian must be deported to a third country,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.
Ghukasian will appeal against the ruling, Baghdasarian said, adding that his American lawyers will also ask a higher court to release him from custody pending its ruling on the appeal. The lawyer made clear that regardless of the ruling, his client will participate in next year’s Armenian parliamentary elections through his new party called DOK.
Another party unofficially led by Ghukasian garnered 10 percent of the vote in the 2023 Yerevan elections thanks to his populist appeal. The blogger, who is better known with his English nickname Dog, subsequently fell out with most of its senior members and set up DOK.