Prison Staff Tried to Make Me Convince Pashinyan to Stop Writing Articles: Attorney

There has been three open and direct attempts to persuade local daily Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”) chief editor, imprisoned opposition journalist Nikol Pashinyan to stop writing articles; later, those persuasions were sprinkled with a few threats, said Pashinyan’s attorney Vahe Grigoryan, speaking to journalists in Yerevan today.

“An attempt at transferring such persuasions to him were also made once through me. They tried to convince me to convince him not to write articles,” he said, noting that it was the penitentiary administration who made such a request. Pashinyan’s attorney also mentioned that he was not allowed to meet with his client privately, though meetings are permitted, but always with the presence of a prison staff member.

“They fully listen to our conversation, I’m almost sure that our conversations are being recorded; that is, no working conditions are being ensured. Nikol Pashinyan also is unable to send articles to the outside world through me or his relatives, since before every meeting with me, they thoroughly search him, as happened recently and they found on his person simply one piece of writing and they didn’t allow him to bring it with him. The writing referred to the harassment against him,” he said.

In the attorney’s opinion, Nikol’s published articles are unwanted by some.

“Currently, Nikol Pashinyan is on trial within the limits of the case presented to the European Court, and I’m confident that the regime which is applied to him aims at presenting an argument before the court to inform the government what type of arguments are being presented, and what are the explanations, the grounds for these,” he said.