Ashotyan's Name Used in Criminal Complaint, Lawyer Says

This morning, a complaint regarding a criminal offense was submitted to the Prosecutor General on behalf of Armen Ashotyan, related to the illegal prohibition of his departure from Armenia on November 16, 2022. To clarify the circumstances surrounding this matter, I will present the events of that day. This was stated by Ashotyan's lawyer, Tigran Atanesyan, on his Facebook page.

“So, on November 16, at 2:30 AM at Zvartnots Airport, the border guards informed A. Ashotyan that his exit from the country was prohibited because he is a defendant in some case. They provided him with the investigator's phone number. I called the investigator at 3 AM, who answered my call on the second attempt (the person was, naturally, asleep, which was later confirmed verbally), and he stated that a decision had been made by the supervising prosecutor to initiate public criminal prosecution against A. Ashotyan (a new designation for the accusation decision).

Later that evening at 8:30 PM, A. Ashotyan was handed the mentioned decision and the investigator's decision regarding the measure of restraint forbidding him to leave the country. Both decisions are dated November 16, 2022, but there is no mention of the time. Therefore, for the prohibition of A. Ashotyan's exit from Armenia to be legal, the following must have occurred: from 00:01 to 02:30 on November 16, the supervising prosecutor must have been at their workplace and made the decision on the accusation, after which the original document must have been transferred to the investigator, who must also have been at their workplace at the time, followed by the investigator making a decision regarding the measure of restraint and informing a police or NSS officer authorized to input information into the SPECT system, which should have executed this action. All this within a maximum of 2 hours and 29 minutes.

If there is anyone who believes in the likelihood of such hyper-rapid actions, then I sincerely congratulate you on your absolute ignorance of our law enforcement system. It is clear that neither the supervising prosecutor nor the investigator needed this theatrical performance, and the authors of all this are in much higher positions. For this reason, it is clear that the proceedings regarding the criminal complaint, if such exist, will not have a legal conclusion but will be covered up.

In such cases, the best option is to grab some popcorn and watch how the capitulatory authorities disgrace themselves once again,” the lawyer wrote.