A man was arrested in Yerevan after an attack on the Armenian National Security Service building.
The man who threw a Molotov cocktail at the National Security Service of Armenia building has been arrested in Yerevan on charges of terrorism and hooliganism.
The incident occurred on the evening of Friday, March 6.
A video circulating in Armenian media shows a man standing in the roadway. He removes a white bag from the bottle and throws it on the ground, then lights the bottle on fire and throws it at the building. A flame erupts near the wall of a building, but a person does not flee the scene, remaining on the roadway for some time.
The Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced the arrest of a suspect that same evening. "One person was detained and taken to the pretrial investigation department," Armenia Today quoted a ministry spokesperson as saying.
On Monday, March 9, the Prosecutor General's Office of Armenia announced that the detainee had been placed in custody. "The court granted the motion to apply a two-month pretrial detention measure against him," Novosti-Armenia quotes a department representative as saying.
The man is charged with three criminal offenses: destruction or damage to property by arson, explosion, or other generally dangerous means (Article 264 of the Armenian Criminal Code), hooliganism (Article 297 of the Armenian Criminal Code), and terrorism (Article 308 of the Armenian Criminal Code), the Investigative Committee of Armenia reported on March 7.
Law enforcement agencies have not released the name of the detainee or officially commented on his motives. However, some sources have linked him to businessman Samvel Karapetyan. "The detainee recently arrived in Armenia from Russia and is a supporter of Tashir Samo," the pro-government Telegram channel Baghramyan 26 reported late in the evening of March 6.
The owner of Tashir Group, Samvel Karapetyan, is accused of calling for the overthrow of the constitutional order and economic crimes. In November 2025, an Armenian court extended his arrest, but on December 30, the businessman was transferred to house arrest. On January 12, the businessman's lawyer reported that the Prosecutor General's Office demanded Karapetyan's return to detention, but on January 18, the court upheld the decision on his house arrest and Karapetyan was released from detention. Karapetyan's supporters who gathered in Yerevan greeted him with applause.
Pro-Russian blogger Mika Badalyan, in turn, interpreted the incident as a manifestation of "popular anger."
"It's time for Pashinyan to realize: this man is only the first sign of popular anger. If the regime tries to falsify the election results, he can rest assured: there will be thousands of such determined Armenians on the streets, and they will fight to the very end," he wrote.