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Samvel Karapetyan
Armenia & Karabakh

Armenian Court Rules Karapetyan’s Arrest Unlawful

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The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
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By Arshaluys Barseghyan

YEREVAN (OC-Media) — On Monday, August 11, the lawyers of detained Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan announced that the Armenian Court of Criminal Appeals decided that Karapetyan’s arrest “was unlawful”. In turn, Armenian authorities vowed to appeal the decision.

Karapetyan was detained on June 18, a day after making a statement in defense of the church in its confrontation with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Following his viral remarks, his house in Yerevan was raided and he was taken into custody and charged with calling for the usurpation of power in Armenia.

In the aftermath of his arrest, after several raids and inspections in his businesses in Armenia, Karapetyan faced a second set of charges — money laundering.

On Monday, Karapetyan’s lawyer Lianna Gasparyan noted in her Facebook post that with the court’s verdict considering Karapetyan’s arrest “unlawful” confirmed the tycoon was “illegally held in detention” for over nine hours on 18 June.

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“Despite this, Samvel Karapetyan has remained in detention for 53 days now. His detention has not been lifted as of this moment, and most likely, under the current circumstances, a motion to extend it will be submitted,” Karapetyan’s legal team wrote in a separate Facebook post.

The lawyers further noted that the Court of Criminal Appeals previously ruled that the authorities” raid of his house was unlawful as well.

Following statements by Karapetyan’s team, the Prosecutor General’s Office vowed to appeal the court’s decision.

In an interview with state-run media Armenpress, the Armenian authorities dismissed Karapetyan’s lawyers’ claim that he is being illegally detained.

Armenpress quoted the Prosecutor General’s Office as saying that Karapetyan was released following his initial arrest on 18 June and was later detained “on a different basis, which they claimed was recognized as lawful, including through the outcome of the subsequent appeal”.

However the authorities did not elaborate on the details of the case.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

The contradictory statements of the Armenian government and Karapetyan’s lawyers over the court ruling are not unprecedented, with the two sides most recently disputing over what appears to be their interpretation of an international arbitration case regarding Karapetyan’s management of the Electric Networks of Armenia.

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