Among those detained in Armenia is a blogger who criticized the government
Sputnik Armenia correspondent Ashot Gevorkian and blogger Mikhail Badalyan have been detained near the border with Azerbaijan, the government in Yerevan confirmed on Thursday.
Gevorkian and Badalyan were among the seven persons arrested in the Syunik province on Wednesday and Thursday, according to Gor Abrahamyan, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Armenia. He added that the arrests were related to suspected violations of Article 355 of the criminal code, described as “illegal trafficking of firearms and ammunition.”
Sputnik Armenia said that Gevorkian was working on a radio show about the lives of Armenians in the region bordering Azerbaijan, which has seen sporadic clashes over the past several years.
Badalyan was taken by “unknown men wearing masks at a hotel in Goris” on Wednesday evening, according to Evgeny Primakov, the head of the Russian agency for international cooperation Rossotrudnichestvo.
Primakov also hosts a radio show on Sputnik. In a social media post, he said that Badalyan had been a guest on Tuesday evening and “expressed the opposition viewpoint quite strongly and criticized the government of Armenia” on air.
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