Serzh Sargsyan Secretly Met with Robert Kocharian

Today, hraparak.am has received information that last week, Serzh Sargsyan was summoned to the NSS for questioning in connection with a certain case. However, no official statement has been released, and the Republican Party or Serzh Sargsyan's office have made no announcements, which raises suspicions.

Our sources confirmed that the third President of Armenia was invited to the NSS in relation to a criminal case involving Ruben Hayrapetyan (Nemets Rubo). This information was confirmed by Serzh Sargsyan's lawyer Amram Makinyan, who stated: “Yes, last week the President was summoned to the NSS and was questioned in a procedural capacity regarding a criminal case.” However, Makinyan refrained from disclosing which specific case his client was questioned about. When asked how long Sargsyan remained at the NSS, Makinyan said the questioning did not last long.

As for why Serzh Sargsyan was summoned to the NSS concerning a criminal case seemingly unrelated to him, and why no statement was issued, this is a topic for deeper analysis. We managed to ascertain that the questioning was actually a respectable pretext for Serzh Sargsyan to enter the NSS building legally. The interrogation itself was indeed very brief. The real purpose of the visit was that after the short questioning, he was taken down to the NSS isolation unit at the 'Yerevan-Center' penitentiary, where he had a private conversation with the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharian.

According to a source from the penitentiary, the meeting lasted quite a long time—about four hours. Naturally, only the two presidents know what they discussed. We can only speculate about the purpose of this meeting and its potential consequences.

One thing is clear: the organizer and patron of the meeting is Nikol Pashinyan. Most likely, it was at his request or suggestion that Serzh Sargsyan visited the NSS. It can be assumed that it was to make some kind of proposal on behalf of the authorities. Perhaps they discussed a 'freedom-for-something' deal. This could involve, for example, his release but with the condition of eventually stepping back from politics or reducing his team’s criticism of the authorities, softening his media outlets' stance towards Pashinyan, reducing anti-government propaganda on Facebook, etc.

It is noteworthy that the mediator was Serzh Sargsyan himself, rather than someone else.