Attorney Ruben Melikian said the measure includes restrictions on Samsonian’s public speech.
Samsonian and his co-host on the Imnemnimi podcast, Vazgen Saghatelian, were jailed in November for verbally abusing Parliament Speaker Alen Simonian in response to his insults.
Simonian branded the two podcasters as “sons of a b*tch” when he commented on their seven-hour interview with former President Serzh Sarkisian broadcast live on YouTube earlier that month. They responded to him with offensive language.
The speaker affiliated with the ruling Civil Contract party demanded criminal proceedings against them, saying that they not only insulted but also threatened him. Two days later, officers of Armenia’s National Security Service demonstratively detained the podcasters, searching their homes and their studio in the process. Another law-enforcement agency, the Investigative Committee, swiftly charged them with hooliganism.
The two vocal critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian continued to strongly deny the accusation when they went on trial on January 9. Samsonian announced his hunger strike in the courtroom right after the presiding judge extended his and Saghatelian’s arrest by three months.
The Court of Appeals overturned that extension in February, granting Samsonian house arrest, ten days after he underwent surgery in a hospital in Yerevan following a two-week hunger strike in prison. Samsonian stopped refusing food in late January after prison authorities reluctantly allowed his transfer to the Izmirlian Medical Center in the Armenian capital.
Earlier this month, a coalition of Western press freedom groups for the first time included Armenia on its list of countries in wider Europe jailing journalists or other media figures. In doing so, the Platform for the Safety of Journalists cited the pre-trial detention of the two Armenian podcasters.
Dozens of other critics of Pashinian, including an opposition mayor and three archbishops of the Armenian Apostolic Church, have also been arrested in recent months in what the Armenian opposition calls a pre-election government crackdown on dissent. The authorities deny that they are political prisoners.