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Lawyers of arrested opposition activist Avetik Chalabyan have sounded the alarm on another violation in their client’s case concerning the assignment of an appeal against his arrest.

The defense appealed against the decision of a Yerevan first instance court to reject a request for Chalabyan’s release to a higher court. The appeal was first automatically assigned to a judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, but then "manually" passed to another judge, the legal team quoted lawyer Varazdat Harutyunyan as saying on social media.

According to the lawyer, on Friday the Court of Appeals said that judge Arshak Vardanyan had been appointed to the case, but today it turned out that the case had been unlawfully passed to lawyer Tigran Simonyan, who has the lowest rating on HelpCourt, a review site for judges, the legal team said in a statement.

Chalabyan was arrested on May 12 for allegedly trying to pay students of the Armenian National Agrarian University to participate in anti-government protests in Yerevan. He has denied the charges as politically motivated.

Chalabyan is a co-founder of Arar Foundation, a charity supporting the Armenian army as well as border villages in Armenia and Artsakh.