Armenia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has petitioned the Central Electoral Commission for permission to lift the immunity and bring criminal prosecution against former President and opposition Armenia Alliance leader Robert Kocharyan, along with two of the bloc’s parliamentary candidates, Asatur Kocharyan, 154th on its electoral list, and Ruslan Barseghyan, 62nd, seeking the arrest of the two candidates.
Because the three remain election candidates, their immunity can only be lifted with the CEC’s consent, which the petition seeks. According to the prosecutors’ filing, the relevant supporting case materials were submitted alongside the request. The office is seeking permission not only to prosecute the two candidates, Asatur Kocharyan and Barseghyan, but also to arrest them as a restraint measure. In Robert Kocharyan’s case, the petition refers to prosecution only and makes no mention of arrest.
It is not yet known which criminal case the petition concerns. Kocharyan’s only existing prosecution is the long-running “March 1” case, tied to the deadly 2008 post-election unrest, and in that case he is under no travel ban, his son, MP Levon Kocharyan, has said.
The petition follows the blocking of Kocharyan at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport days earlier, when authorities prevented the former president from leaving on a pre-announced private trip. Neither the Prosecutor General’s Office nor the National Security Service has explained the legal basis for that stop.
The move also aligns with what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan promised throughout the campaign. Branding the opposition the “three-headed party of war,” he repeatedly threatened new criminal cases, declaring that “Robert Kocharyan will go to prison, Gagik Tsarukyan will go to prison, Samvel Karapetyan will go to prison,” and reaffirmed those statements at a recent government session. The petition against Kocharyan comes within days of the tax-evasion indictment of Tsarukyan, a separate prosecution of Tsarukyan’s son-in-law, and a court ruling stripping Tsarukyan’s Olympic Committee of $90 million in Tsaghkadzor land, as Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance and other opposition forces challenge the June 7 election results before the Constitutional Court.
