A court in Yerevan has ordered a house arrest for a young man who has been charged with hooliganism and public incitement of hatred in an incident involving a pro-government lawmaker.
The judge conditioned Samvel Vardanyan’s home confinement as opposed to pretrial detention by his paying a bail set at 7 million drams (about $17,600).
By making the decision the court granted the motion of the Investigative Committee regarding Vardanyan, who was detained earlier this week after calling Hakob Aslanian, a member of the ruling Civil Contract party’s parliamentary faction, an “anti-Armenian scumbag” upon encountering the politician on a bus in Yerevan.
The incident that Vardanyan filmed on his phone took place on Monday and, as is seen on the video that the man himself posted on Facebook later, involved a verbal exchange and what appeared to be some mutual pushing from both parties whom the passengers on the bus tried to calm down.
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Aslanian, who alleged that Vardanyan acted deliberately in trying to block his way out of the bus while insulting him, said he decided to file a complaint with the police after the publication of the video. He insisted that the actions of the young man transgressed the right to freedom of expression that Vardanyan and his supporters insisted he was exercising.
Vardanyan, an apparent government critic who had also been briefly detained last year for allegedly calling Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a traitor upon seeing him in the street, later claimed that he was assaulted and tortured by a group of unidentified men wearing masks while being transferred to a detention center.
He claimed that two police officers escorting him in a car pulled in and went out “for personal matters”, during which time he was dragged out and tortured while remaining handcuffed.
The alleged torture case reported by Vardanyan’s lawyers sparked widespread outcry among opposition groups and calls for an investigation into alleged political motives denied by the ruling party.
A spokesman for the Investigative Committee said on Thursday that the alleged crime was being investigated.
Meanwhile, Vardanyan’s lawyer Ruben Melikyan said today that by the decision of the court his client had only two days to pay the bail. He said that a public appeal had been made to raise the bail funds, which the Vardanyan family apparently cannot afford to cover on their own.