Argishti Kiviryan, a Yerevan-based journalist and civic activist, was detained by Armenian police early Wednesday on suspicion of possession of an offensive weapon, Kiviryan\u2019s lawyer, Lusine Sahakyan, said in conversation with Epress.am. According to the lawyer, Kiviryan is currently being held in the Yerevan police central division.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey approached Argishti in the street and wanted to search him; he was detained shortly after when he refused to allow the search. Police offer us no explanation, and it\u2019s unclear why they suddenly decided Argishti was carrying a weapon. They say they \u2018noticed an item resembling a knife\u2019 on him. They couldn\u2019t have noticed a knife on him because he does not carry one. It\u2019s evident that he has been detained unlawfully,\u201d Sahakyan said.<\/p>\n
The lawyer is convinced that today\u2019s incident \u201cis yet another episode of the political persecution\u201d against Kiviryan: \u201cHe is obviously being persecuted. He has long been subjected to various forms of persecution, from criminal<\/a><\/span> [ARM]<\/em><\/strong> to administrative. There has even been an assassination attempt on him.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to Epress.am, a spokesperson for Yerevan police said Kiviryan \u201cwas detained on suspicion of committing a criminal offense.\u201d The spokesperson, however, did not offer us any details about the alleged offense and said that \u201cfurther information will be provided later.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" – He is obviously being persecuted. He has long been subjected to various forms of persecution, from criminal to administrative. There has even <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[66030],"tags":[54591,29333],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}