KP Member Rustam Bakoyan to Publicly Apologize to Edgar Ghazaryan and Pay 1 Million Drams

The First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Ararat and Vayots Dzor regions, presided by Judge Gohar Kostanyan, issued a ruling on February 28 regarding the claim of former Armenian Ambassador to Poland, extraordinary and plenipotentiary minister, and public figure Edgar Ghazaryan against the MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, Rustam Bakoyan. The court has obliged Bakoyan to publicly apologize to Ghazaryan for offensive remarks made and to pay 1 million drams in compensation.

The court ruled to partially grant the demands against Rustam Bakoyan regarding public apology for defamation, to publicly refute information considered slanderous, and to provide compensation. Specifically:

1. Rustam Bakoyan is to publicly apologize to Edgar Ghazaryan with the following text: 'I, Rustam Zurbayev Bakoyan, apologize to Edgar Ferdinand Ghazaryan for the offensive phrases: "You have no brain", "Explain this to this brainless guy...", "Oh, Mr. Clown", "You are not the son of your people", "What can you explain to this clown", "Beast", "You are a mistake", "You are not sufficient to answer questions", "Oh, Ms. Ghazaryan, why were you brought here", "You are too small, do you hear me? You are too small, hey boy", "Be silent, hey".
2. The apology text must be published through the original platforms that posted the video containing the offensive remarks (official pages of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia on YouTube or the official page of 1in TV on YouTube).

Furthermore, 1,000,000 drams are to be collected from Rustam Bakoyan for non-material damages incurred to Edgar Ghazaryan due to the defamation. The rest of the claims were rejected. An additional 200,000 drams were awarded to Ghazaryan as reasonable attorney fees, along with 50,000 drams for the state duty paid related to the claim.

It is worth recalling that Edgar Ghazaryan had submitted his complaint against Rustam Bakoyan to the court on April 9 of the previous year. The claimant indicated that on April 4, 2023, he was invited to an extraordinary session of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Protection of Human Rights and Public Affairs to discuss proposing a candidate for the position of Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia. The meeting was initially disrupted by representatives of the Civil Contract party. During the session attended by both committee members and many other MPs from the Civil Contract faction, members of that faction obstructed Ghazaryan's speech by making provocative and offensive remarks, clearly intended to disparage him with a negative, mocking tone, coupled with irony and laughter.

During the meeting, Rustam Bakoyan made openly negative and offensive remarks towards the claimant, using excessively coarse language that is unbecoming of an MP. Moreover, Bakoyan also made statements considered slanderous regarding Edgar Ghazaryan, particularly accusing him of drug use, saying, "You and those like you are the ones using drugs, indirectly!" It should be noted that Bakoyan was not the only one exhibiting hooligan behavior that day; KP faction secretary Arthur Hovhannisyan also displayed similar conduct.