A Yerevan court judge presiding over the trial on Thursday allowed prosecutors to keep Lidya Mantashian in detention for three more months. The judge, Karen Farkhoyan, has repeatedly refused to release Mantashian from custody since the start of court hearings on the high-profile case in August.
Farkhoyan has instead freed or moved to house arrest 11 other defendants pending a verdict in the case. What is more, he has made sure that only Mantashian’s sister can visit her in jail no more than twice a month. Even Archbishop Galstanian is allowed to receive just about any visitor on a practically daily basis.
Mantashian’s continuing imprisonment is causing a growing uproar from opposition figures, prominent lawyers and other critics of the Armenian government. They claim that the presiding judge and prosecutors are singling her out for harsh treatment on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s orders. The 39-year-old woman was a close aide to Galstanian during and after last year’s anti-government protest movement led by the outspoken archbishop.
Zaruhi Hovannisian, a veteran human rights activist, accused the authorities of “persecuting a woman in a targeted and consistent way.” She argued that the male defendants released from jail for now are facing the same coup charges as Mantashian. Another campaigner, Zhanna Aleksanian, drew parallels with the Soviet authorities’ treatment of dissidents.
“It appears that the prosecutor-general [Anna Vardapetian] has thoroughly studied the Soviet prosecutorial system,” Aleksanian wrote on Facebook.
“I consider [Mantashian’s continuing detention] a punitive and unjustified action,” Artur Sakunts, head of the Vanadzor-based Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“I don’t understand the reason for that differentiated approach,” added the Western-funded activist, who has rarely criticized the current government’s crackdowns on the opposition.
Speaking in the courtroom on Thursday, Mantashian suggested that she is being punished for exposing embarrassing “information about some officials.” She did not elaborate.
She also said: “I was warned that the judge has not received permission from Nikol and his clique to set me free. I knew this one week ago.”
“There is a political order not to release Lidya Mantashian from custody,” her lawyer, Tatevik Soghoyan, claimed for her part.
Galstanian and his supporters were arrested on June 25 amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial efforts to oust the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church opposed to his concessions to Azerbaijan. The authorities have since also arrested and indicted dozens of other critics of Pashinian in what the Armenian opposition calls an intensifying government crackdown on dissent. They have denied any political motives behind these cases.