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Analyst Lilit Tumanyan voiced support for anti-government activist Samvel Vardanyan, who was detained after confronting MP Hakob Aslanyan of Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party on a bus in Yerevan on Monday.

The young man was arrested on charges of hooliganism after calling the deputy an “anti-Armenian scumbag” which sparked an altercation between them.

A group of masked men attacked and beat Vardanyan while he was being transported to a detention center in Yerevan. The violence took place when the police officers escorting him got out of the car “for personal matters”.

"Samvel Vardanyan simply exercised his political right to express an opinion, to publicly reprimand a politician," Tumanyan told Panorama.am outside the Investigative Committee in Yerevan on Wednesday.

She noted that according to the assessments of the Armenian Center for Political Rights, he had not committed any wrongdoing.

Tumanyan called the activist’s detention a “consequence of usurpation of the judicial power in Armenia, which is heading for dictatorship”.

“The absence of democracy in Armenia is already clear to many, even to the European organizations, which applaud Nikol Pashinyan for his democracy. They know full well that it is not democracy, but authoritarianism striving for dictatorship," the analyst underscored.