Artur Osipyan filed a lawsuit against Nikol Pashinyan.
The Chairman of the Revolutionary Party of Artsakh, Artur Osipyan, appealed to the court. He demands a public retraction of the information, which he considers slanderous, and that Nikol Pashinyan be forced to apologize.
As "Caucasian Knot" reported, Karabakh activist Artur Osipyan, after being released from custody, announced a lawsuit against Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
On May 22, it became known that Karabakh activist Artur Osipyan, arrested in Yerevan following an argument with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a campaign for the Civil Contract party, announced a hunger strike, demanding an apology from Nikol Pashinyan. Observers are certain that Osipyan's prosecution is politically motivated, as he has not broken the law. On May 25, activists in Yerevan came out to the Armenian government building demanding Osipyan's release. On June 10, the prosecutor made a decision to lift Osipyan's pretrial detention.
"Dear compatriots, on May 18, in connection with the slander and false information spread against me by candidate for Prime Minister of Armenia Pashinyan, I resorted to an extreme measure—a hunger strike—to defend my dignity, since I had no other choice in prison," Osipyan wrote on his Facebook page*.
According to him, after the prosecutor's office changed his pretrial detention, he will continue his fight in a different way. "Today I filed a lawsuit in the court of general jurisdiction of the first instance, demanding a public retraction of the factual information, which constitutes slander, and an apology," he said in a statement.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan used insults and threats during meetings with voters in response to questions from refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh. After this, clinic employee Armine Soghoyan, who asked about casualties in the Karabakh wars, was asked to resign, and Artur Osipyan was detained. He was charged with hooliganism, incitement to violence, and obstructing a campaign. On May 20, the court sent him to pretrial detention for two months.
Osipyan emphasized that the criminal proceedings against him are still ongoing. Pashinyan's representatives have not commented on Osipyan's statement, according to Novosti-Armenia.
The Civil Contract Party, led by current Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, won the country's parliamentary elections, garnering 49.81% of the vote. Pashinyan's party's victory in the parliamentary elections made the Kremlin look like the losing party, Russian political scientists interviewed by the Caucasian Knot noted.