U.S.-based political analyst and Lehigh University international relations lecturer Arman Grigoryan commented on the arrest of Gagik Tsarukyan, saying that detaining an elderly man who offered no resistance in such a manner was not justified by any operational necessity.

According to reports, Tsarukyan was brought to the ground by seven or eight officers before being handcuffed.

Grigoryan argued that the operation could only have been intended to humiliate Tsarukyan.

"Several questions regarding Gagik Tsarukyan's arrest.

Is it possible to take the legitimacy of the charges against him seriously if those charges are unclear even to Daniel Ioannisyan?

Do these charges concern newly committed crimes, or alleged offenses committed in the past? If they relate to past offenses, why have they only now been brought up?

Could the accusations directed at the 'oligarch' Tsarukyan not also be applied to other individuals with the same status? And if they could, does this not amount to selective justice, which is incompatible with the proper administration of justice?

If Tsarukyan is unpopular with part of the public, is that sufficient reason to tolerate arbitrary and discriminatory treatment by the authorities against him? More broadly, are we not already approaching totalitarianism if it has become a principle that some people may be handcuffed in one manner while others are not?

P.S. When I wrote my previous post, I did not know how Tsarukyan had been arrested. Now that I do, I want to add one more question.

It is obvious that arresting an elderly man who offered no resistance in that way was not dictated by any operational necessity. Therefore, the only possible purpose was to humiliate Tsarukyan. The question is whether such an action could have occurred simply because the head of the police unit carrying out the arrest decided to act on his own. I am convinced the answer is obvious to everyone.

And if it was not his own decision, does this amount to carrying out Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's threat to 'screw' his opponents? I do not see what other conclusion can be drawn. And if that is the case, Nikol Pashinyan did not 'screw' only Gagik Tsarukyan—he 'screwed' all of us, but especially those who carried out the order and the law enforcement system as a whole."

From the early morning of July 6, officers of Armenia's National Security Service, State Revenue Committee and Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted simultaneous searches at more than 70 locations, including Tsarukyan's residence and companies linked to him. Tsarukyan was arrested. On July 7, the Court of First Instance of the Avan and Nor Nork administrative districts considered the prosecution's request for a pretrial measure, and by the end of the day ordered his detention for two months.