An Armenian court on Friday put the nation\u2019s former president in custody on charges linked to a deadly police crackdown on a 2008 protest over alleged voting fraud. Robert Kocharian, 64, spent two weeks in jail last summer on charges of violating the constitutional order by sending police to break up the protest in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.<\/p>\n
He was freed on appeal, but on Friday a higher court ordered that he should stay behind bars. Kocharian\u2019s lawyer said he walked to jail without waiting for police to escort him there.<\/p>\n
Kocharian rejects the charges, calling them a political vendetta by incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who helped stage the 2008 protest.<\/p>\n
The demonstration protested the results of an election two weeks earlier for Kocharian\u2019s replacement. Eight demonstrators and two police died in the clash.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main organiser of the events \u2026 tries to clean himself of blood,\u201d Kocharian said of Pashinian in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n
In the 2008 election, Kocharian, who was president from 1998 to 2008, backed Serzh Sargsyan, who served as Armenia\u2019s president for the following decade.<\/p>\n
In April, due to term limits, Sargsyan shifted into the prime minister\u2019s seat in what was seen as an attempt to cling to power. But he stepped down after just six days in office in the face of massive protests organized by Pashinian, who then took the prime minister\u2019s post.<\/p>\n
Wiretaps released earlier this week had Pashinian discussing Kocharian\u2019s arrest with the nation\u2019s top security official. Pashinian denounced the released recordings as a \u201cdeclaration of war\u201d by his political foes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Armenian court on Friday put the nation\u2019s former president in custody on charges linked to a deadly police crackdown on a 2008 protest over alleged voting fraud. Robert Kocharian, 64, spent two weeks in jail last summer on charges of violating the constitutional order by sending police to break up the protest in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49519,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49520,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49518\/revisions\/49520"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}