Court extends Tevanyan’s detention for two more months

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Armenian court of first instance has extended the pre-trial detention of Mother Armenia party leader Andranik Tevanyan by two months.

“The court granted the investigator’s motion and extended the detention by two months. The only issue recognized by the court concerns his right to medical care: the investigator has been instructed to ensure that Tevanyan is allowed to receive treatment from his own doctor at a civilian hospital,” attorney Sergey Marabyan said, according to Sputnik Armenia.

Marabyan said he had only recently received the ruling and had not yet had time to review it in full, but insisted that there was no criminal case. He added that law enforcement authorities themselves had been unable to determine whether the information in question constituted a state secret and had provided no clarification.

“A state secret is not an abstract concept; there are clear legal definitions. For information to become a state secret, it must first be classified, sent to the National Security Service, registered within the period prescribed by law, formally designated as secret, and made subject to restrictions. Only then is it assigned a classification level—secret, top secret or of special importance. We are now requesting those classification documents because, without them, no information can be considered a state secret,” Marabyan said.

He argued that all of the grounds presented by the prosecution were merely assumptions.

Earlier, Tevanyan issued a statement from detention calling for an open trial in his case. He said the public should know what he is accused of and should be shown the facts.

Tevanyan was detained in May on charges of espionage and treason. On May 21, Armenia’s Investigative Committee alleged that citizen A.T. (Andranik Tevanyan), while serving as a member of parliament, had allegedly been recruited by a foreign intelligence service in 2024 and engaged in intelligence activities.

According to investigators, he unlawfully obtained detailed information from a closed parliamentary discussion held in April 2024, translated the materials into Russian and transferred information containing state secrets. The Investigative Committee claims he received $622,000 for those actions. A criminal case was opened. Tevanyan has denied the accusations, calling them absurd and politically motivated.