Gevorg Safaryan's lawyer appealed to Prosecutor General (video)
Tigran Hayrapetyan, the lawyer of arrested opposition activist Gevorg Safaryan, today, today filed a petition with the Prosecutor General's Office asking the latter to review the activist’s restraint – arrest. Safaryan was arrested on December 31 with a number of activists of the New Armenia Public Salvation Front as they attempted to place a Christmas tree in Yerevan’s Liberty Square. The other activists were set free later in the same day while Safaryan was charged with assaulting and injuring a senior police officer, Gegham Khachatryan, and was placed under pre-trial arrest for two months. Human rights activists say Safaryan's arrest was planned. The police in Armenia have become a tool in the hands of the political power who want to suppress civil activists with the help of the police,” they say. Another evidence of this is that Zhirayr Sefilyan, Head of the joint opposition headquarters of the New Armenia Public Salvation Front, was summoned to the Investigative Committee yesterday where he was kept for three hours. After leaving the Committee Sefilyan said the investigator had threatened him. The opposition figure was invited to the Investigative Committee in connection with last year’s mass disorders organized on April 24.
