Founding Parliament Sues Republican Party official for slander
The Founding Parliament Movement has sued Gagik Melikyan Republican, Secretary of the Republican Party faction, for slander. The Founding Parliament claims that Melikyan insulted them in an interview when he said that the organizers of the automobile rally to Artsakh under motto “100th Anniversary without the Regime” were financed by Turkish-Azerbaijan sources. On January 31, scores of activists representing the Founding Parliament opposition movement, a successor of the Pre-parliament pressure group, organized an automobile march to Nagorno-Karabakh as part of their campaign seeking a regime change in Armenia. Near Berdzor, they were stopped by local police and a group of plainclothes men who forcefully blocked their access to the territory of Karabakh. A number of activists, including Jirayr Sefilyan, a Karabakh war veteran and a former commander of the Shushi special detachment, were beaten up during the incident. Also, some vehicles of the automobile march were damaged.
