A judge has seen fit to prolong the pre-trial detention of journalist Tigran Petrosyan, one of the fourteen political activists arrested in Yerevan on November 5 last year when they attempted to stage a protest march on the Presidential Palace.

Most of the protesters, headed by activist Shant Haroutyunyan, were arrested on charges that they assaulted representatives of the government.

This news was conveyed to Hetq by Petrosyan’s lawyer Ara Zakaryan, who ridiculed the action of Judge Gagik Poghosyan as baseless.

Zakaryan pointed out that Poghosyan was named the best judge in Armenia last year.

“My client is charged with pushing a policeman. Judge Poghosyan accepts this charge made by the prosecutor’s investigator as the truth, regardless of the evidence to the contrary that we have provided,” noted Zakaryan.

The lawyer claims that the court even refused to look at videotapes of the incident which purport to show that Petrosyan was trying to intervene and defuse the confrontation between cops and protesters.

Zakaryan also argues that the policeman who identified Tigran Petrosyan as the one who pushed him gave an incorrect description of his client.

The policeman described his assaulter as a bearded man wearing a red jacket.

Zakaryan says Petrosyan didn’t have a beard when the incident took place and that he was wearing glasses, something that the cop failed to mention.

38 protesters were taken into custody on November 5, 2013 when they set off fireworks as they made their way from Liberty Square to the Presidential Palace.

Fourteen were eventually charged and have been in detention ever since.

Photo (from left): Judge Gagik Poghosyan, attorney Ara Zakaryan