Ara Sahakyan to File Lawsuit Against Taron Chakhoyan for Defamation by 'Fake' Factory

The former head of the National Assembly staff, Ara Sahakyan, is set to file a lawsuit against citizen Taron Chakhoyan. In an interview with ‘Factinfo’, lawyer Narek Aloyan stated that an internet investigation revealed that Chakhoyan's Facebook page and media outlets published defamatory and insulting information about Sahakyan, prompting the upcoming lawsuit to publicly refute the defamation and demand an apology for the insults. Additionally, a monetary claim will be included as stipulated by law, with maximum amounts specified—$2 million for defamation and 1 million drams for insult.

“The funds obtained will be directed to the soldiers’ health insurance foundation. Mr. Sahakyan has no personal financial expectations from these amounts. The funds will be dedicated to ensuring the health of soldiers,” the lawyer emphasized, adding that the intention is clear—to submit a legal claim for defamation and insult in civil proceedings. Furthermore, a demand will be made to hold Chakhoyan criminally responsible for false accusations.

It should be noted that during the war, the false narrative of “internal enemies, traitors” reemerged, targeting Ara Sahakyan again with obviously false information. Specifically, Facebook user Taron Chakhoyan, known as the “leader” of the government’s fake factory, posted a video claiming that emails from an address named after Sahakyan were sent to other addresses with specific remarks about representatives of the government. However, Chakhoyan’s commentary was even more noteworthy.

Independent experts immediately announced that the video distributed by the fake factory’s “leader” slandering Sahakyan was false. Notably, Alexey Chalabyan stated on November 9 that simple analysis already revealed the falsity of the emails attributed to Sahakyan. “Some dark, or rather muddy, forces fabricated an internal political video, which I was almost convinced of at first. And which many of my technically and media-literate friends believed in,” Chalabyan noted, adding, “If we look at the timestamps in this video and pay attention to the dates of the emails, we see such timestamps as 0:22 '5 Nov 2020, 21:03', 0:53 'We, 28 Oct, 07:23', 1:00 '2 Nov 2020, 00:49'. In other words, the format of the dates differs from email to email. Gmail always puts the day of the week here, while the rest of the date retains other formats.”

Furthermore, Gmail indicates the day of the week with a three-letter abbreviation, 'Wed', not the two-letter 'We' as in the fake video. There is no 'natural' explanation for such discrepancies in date formats within the same interface, leading us to conclude that the page’s content has been manually altered. Chalabyan concluded, “Look carefully at the ‘transitions’ occurring at 00:15, 00:50, and 00:58. Every time an email is opened, you will see that the image jitters, the shooting angle changes, and they didn’t even try to hide the traces of montage. ‘Peeple will swallow it?’”

“I call upon the RA National Security Service to investigate who and by what parties' directives are inciting internal conflicts during the wartime situation, pitting Armenians against Armenians, and who publicly expressed themselves last with derogatory remarks about the country’s leadership, the First Lady, their child, and the RA Minister of Defense, attributing this to another person,” he stated.

“The perpetrators and the instigators are obvious to me. I have appealed to relevant state officials to take action and have stated that this base forgery, which is outright defamation, will not go unpunished,” Ara Sahakyan, the former Chief Secretary of the National Assembly, announced, noting that the dissemination of the fake emails attributed to him has political motives. It is noteworthy that Sahakyan was in Artsakh from the first days of the war.

Sahakyan deemed any attempt to incite internal enmity and weaken the rear with clear falsifications during this severe time of war as a form of state treason. It should be noted that on November 9, information about Prime Minister Pashinyan’s treason also became known. That is, the government’s fakes had started acting earlier against individuals with weight and authority in the social and informational sphere to prevent their potential developments. The fabrication was quickly unraveled, and Ara Sahakyan stated that he is committed to ensuring that those spreading defamation are held accountable.