Samvel Karapetyan's Lawyer Issues Statement

Lawyer Aram Vardevanyan writes: “On October 16, 2025, the Anti-Corruption Court extended Samvel Karapetyan's illegal detention by one month. The court effectively noted that an issue regarding the timelines of criminal prosecution arises. The investigative authorities and the Prosecutor's Office directly ignored the court's decision. By the way, during the period preceding and following that decision, we had clearly registered this issue in written motions, explicitly demanding the cessation of the case's delay and the termination of at least the pre-investigation secrecy against us. We even requested to separate the absurd case from the proceedings and send it to court or respect our rights and terminate it.

On December 11, 2025, the Appellate Court, considering one of the demands stated in our appeal, clearly stated that the further delay of Samvel Karapetyan's criminal proceedings (timelines) is problematic and leads to violations of fundamental human rights.

The same Appellate Court, which did not accept our appeal under undeniable conditions of political persecution, nevertheless recorded such a legal position. I also wish to state that motions have been submitted to the investigative authorities demanding active measures to prevent the delay of the investigation, which have been rejected. Therefore, the investigative authorities are not taking active measures; on the contrary, the group consisting of 53 investigators remains decisively inactive, despite Samvel Karapetyan being detained for about six months. The only action they have taken is yet another 'extraordinary' measure, in which they searched the home of a linguistic expert, whose position recorded that in Samvel Karapetyan's speech defending the Mother See, there is no call,” wrote the lawyer.