The former parliamentarian, Mihran Hakobian, was cited by one of his friends, lawyer Ruben Melikian, as saying that he was attacked by several masked men outside a shopping mall in Yerevan.
“They broke his nose and hit him in the head,” Melikian told reporters. “We don’t yet know the consequences of that.”
“Doctors told Mihran Hakobian to stay in the hospital for at least one day,” he said.
Hakobian, who is a vocal critic of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, did not personally make any public statements on the incident. According to Melikian, police investigators visited and questioned him at the city’s Izmirlian Medical Center. Neither the Armenian police nor the Investigative Committee formally opened a criminal case in connection with the incident as of Monday evening.
Hakobian was a member of Armenia’s former parliament, representing ex-President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party. In recent years, he has not been engaged in active politics and has mainly used social media to attack Pashinian and his policies. In his most recent Facebook post, he ridiculed Pashinian’s weekend calls for Armenian priests and church choirs to perform the country’s national anthem before every liturgy.
“This is not even a manifestation of illiteracy,” wrote Hakobian. “This is primitive buffoonery.”
Citing an obscure account on another social media platform, Telegram, the Hraparak newspaper reported later in the day that Hakobian made but then swiftly deleted a post alleging that National Security Service (NSS) Director Andranik Simonian has an affair with Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian. Neither the NSS nor Vardapetian’s office comment on that.
“Obviously, if someone publicly engages in opposition activity … any sensible person will suspect that the attackers are linked to some government faction,” Melikian said when asked about possible reasons for the assault. “There is just no other reason.”
The lawyer critical of the Armenian government noted that in 2021 a hand grenade exploded under Hakobian’s car parked outside his home. The opposition figure claimed at the time that the blast was aimed at intimidating and muzzling him. Nobody was prosecuted in connection with that incident.