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The former chief of staff of the Armenian parliament, Ara Saghatelyan, who was set free on Saturday pending trial, thanked people for the “struggle against the dictatorship and for his freedom” at an opposition rally on Yerevan’s Baghramyan Avenue on Tuesday.

“You won and I am standing here today. We won. We will achieve another victory soon. Thank you. They [PM Nikol Pashinyan and his cabinet] have broken all the written and unwritten rules and crossed all the red lines,” Saghatelyan said in his speech.

He noted that instead of reporting on 5,000 war casualties, prisoners of war, missing persons and all losses of the country, the authorities think that resorting to repressive measures, imprisoning people and discrediting them will help them retain hold on power.

"It won’t work. Today I declare from here that all the slaves of the regime, all the servants will answer before the law, generations and God,” Saghatelyan said, blaming Nikol Pashinyan and his cabinet for the large number of war victims and territorial losses.

Saghatelyan said he was in Artsakh almost throughout the whole period of the recent war and witnessed the “mess” created there.

“The current authorities of infantile idiots even turned the war into a show. Bayraktar drones and cluster munitions were being used against us, while they were assuring people here that we were winning. Then he [Pashinyan] says, “I am sorry”. Seriously? Do you understand what you have done? Do you give yourself an account of what you have done, the lights of how many homes you have extinguished? Do you realize that you have deprived a whole nation of their homeland and honor? Do you realize that you have left tens of thousands of people homeless and thousands of children orphans? There is and will be no forgiveness for you for the simple reason that everyone who will share that responsibility will become an accomplice, and no sane person will go for it,” Saghatelyan emphasized.

As reported earlier, Ara Saghatelyan had been arrested for two months as part of a criminal probe into a case concerning a fake Facebook account opened in the name of “Gagik Soghomonyan”. The page continued to be updated while the former senior parliament staffer was remanded in custody.