Azatutyun.am. The Armenian police attempted to arrest their former chief on Friday as he participated in continuing anti-government protests organized by the country’s leading opposition groups.
General Valeri Osipian joined one of four large groups of opposition supporters who simultaneously marched to various parts of the city from its France Square, the epicenter of the daily protests, early in the afternoon. The demonstrators continued to condemn Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s policy on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and demand his resignation.
One of the marching crowds was confronted by riot police after stopping at a busy street intersection and blocking traffic through it. The police officers jostled with the several hundred protesters and began arresting some of them.
Several officers dragged away Osipian, meeting with strong resistance from other protesters, who tried to prevent the arrest. In ensuing chaotic scenes, it was not clear whether they managed to take him into custody.
The police refused to clarify afterwards whether Osipian was among at least 59 opposition supporters detained on Friday.
The former police chief did not answer phone calls. He spoke to some media outlets in France Square a couple of hours after the incident.
“They didn’t manage to take me away,” Osipian told the Hraparak daily. “People didn’t let them do that.”
Pashinian named Osipian to run the national police service in May 2018 two days after being elected prime minister following weeks of anti-government protests led by him. Osipian was until then a deputy head of Yerevan’s police department responsible for public order and crowd control.
He personally monitored many anti-government rallies staged in the Armenian capital during former President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule. Osipian frequently warned and argued with Pashinian during the 2018 “Velvet Revolution” that toppled Sarkisian.
Osipian was sacked in September 2019. He publicly voiced support for former President Robert Kocharian in the run-up to last year’s snap parliamentary elections.
Kocharian is the top leader of the Hayastan alliance, one of the two opposition forces that launched the “civil disobedience” campaign aimed at toppling Pashinian.
The ex-president’s younger son, Levon, was among demonstrators that marched through other parts of Yerevan on Friday. They nearly clashed with riot police at one point.
Levon Kocharian accused the police of trying to intimidate the opposition and its supporters. “But I can definitely that that is having the opposite effect,” he told reporters.
