Former Arabkir Community Leader Interrogated

The former leader of the Arabkir community, Hovhannes Shahinyan, is currently being interrogated at the investigative department of Yerevan. Yesterday, based on a court ruling, a search was conducted in Shahinyan's residence.

According to him, nothing illegal was found during the search, and nothing was seized. Today at 3:30 PM, he was summoned to the serious crimes division of the Yerevan city administration for questioning.

Shahinyan claims that this is politically motivated persecution. He has also drawn the attention of human rights defenders to this issue.

In an interview with journalists, the former Arabkir leader did not rule out that these events might be connected to occurrences from the late 1990s and early 2000s that also involve his father and the Komitas Market number 5. However, Shahinyan has another theory as well.

"It is possible that this is also related to my work activities in 2006-2007. I am not one of those people who would claim that I did not make any mistakes during my work; such mistakes may have happened, as it is part of the job, and something might have gone wrong," he stated.

Shahinyan is known to be one of the supporters of Robert Kocharyan, but he believes that his civic stance should not be related to today's interrogation.

It should be noted that Hovhannes Shahinyan served as the head of the Arabkir administrative district from 2006 to 2007. A few months ago, he was also summoned for questioning by the NSS.