YEREVAN (Azatutyuan.am) — Five of the seven Armenian opposition activists arrested late last week on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks have been released without charge.
Although Armenia’s Investigative Committee implicitly claimed to have foiled such attacks, only one of the arrested young men, Andranik Chamichyan, was formally charged with “preparation of terrorism.” A Yerevan court allowed the law-enforcement agency to hold the 18-year-old Chamichyan and another suspect in pre-trial detention. The latter was charged with illegal arms possession, rather than terrorism, after investigators reportedly found a hand grenade in his apartment.
Since the Investigative Committee did not indict the five other suspects, it had to free them on Sunday, July 13. Like Chamichyan, they are members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a major opposition party.
In a statement, Dashnaktsutyun portrayed their release as further proof that the arrests were part of the Armenian authorities’ ongoing crackdown on the opposition, the Armenian Apostolic Church and other critics resisting their plans to make more concessions to Azerbaijan.
“As we noted in our previous statements, the allegations of terrorism were baseless from the outset,” it said. “Carrying a clear political context and purpose, they were intended to mislead and intimidate the public.”
