Armenia’s judiciary has detained former President Robert Kocharyan on allegations of financial corruption, in a move that, along with the arrest of nine others, including one of his sons, has again highlighted the crackdown on prominent opposition figures in the country.<\/p>\n
According to Reuters, the Armenian prosecutor general said in a statement that during his presidency from 1998 to 2008, Kocharyan used his official powers to transfer state assets for his own benefit and that of people close to him, while concealing the origin of the assets. He has also been accused of money laundering, bribery and abuse of power.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old Kocharyan is the leader of the Armenia Alliance, the second-largest opposition bloc in parliament. His arrest comes as critics of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan describe the recent wave of detentions as a broad crackdown on political rivals.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the head of the Armenian Church is also on trial in a case the church says is political. Gagik Tsarukyan and Samvel Karapetyan, two other opposition figures, remain in pre-trial detention and house arrest respectively, awaiting judicial proceedings.<\/p>\n
Under Pashinyan, who came to power after street protests in 2018, Armenia has moved closer to the West and away from Russia. Reports say the latest wave of detentions has mainly targeted people seen as close to Moscow; Kocharyan also supported close ties between Yerevan and Moscow during his presidency.<\/p>\n
Kocharyan was previously arrested and tried in 2019 over his role in the aftermath of the disputed March 2008 election. At least 10 people were killed in clashes between police and protesters at the time, but that case was later dropped and his trial ended in 2021. Armenia is a South Caucasus country where Russia maintains a large military base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan is detained on corruption charges amid a wider crackdown on opposition figures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}