Their prompt release contrasting with customary pre-trial arrests of opposition activists and other critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian fueled more opposition claims that senior government or law-enforcement officials were behind the assault on Mihran Hakobian.
Hakobian was hospitalized after being attacked and injured by masked men outside a shopping mall in Yerevan on December 8. Armenia’s Investigative Committee reported on Friday five arrests made in connection with the incident.
The law-enforcement agency said three of the suspects were charged with hooliganism that resulted in “light injuries” while the two others with assisting in the violence. It did not identify the attackers or say anything about their motives.
Meanwhile, a court in Yerevan refused to sanction their pre-trial arrest. Hakobian on Monday condemned the decision as a further sign of official cover-up of the assault attributed by him to his anti-government rhetoric.
“They can attack a person in broad daylight, like a hyena, and nothing will happen to them after that,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service
“All of this was clearly organized because of the public expression of my political stance, and the proof of this is that attackers were freed just as quickly as they were arrested by the law-enforcement system,” he said.
The oppositionist brushed aside last week’s statement by Pashinian condemning the assault.
“If he is so against violence, why are my attackers free while the clergy [three archbishops] and businessman [Samvel] Karapetian held in NSS prison cells for expressing their opinions?” he asked.
Hakobian confirmed that a few days before the attack he made but then swiftly deleted a post in which he wondered whether National Security Service (NSS) Director Andranik Simonian indeed has an affair with Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian.
“My friends said, 'Don't stoop to Nikol's level, remove that post,' and I removed it,” he said.
A vocal critic of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Hakobian was a member of Armenia’s former parliament, representing ex-President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party. In recent years, he has not been engaged in active politics and has mainly used social media to denounce Pashinian and his policies.
In 2021, a hand grenade exploded under Hakobian’s car parked outside his home. He claimed at the time that the blast was aimed at intimidating and muzzling him. Nobody was prosecuted in connection with that incident.