The legal battles initiated by the Mayor of Yerevan against opposition leader Ishkhan Saghatelyan have come to a definitive end, with Armenia’s highest court rejecting the city’s final appeals.
Saghatelyan, who is the Chairman of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) Supreme Body of Armenia and a Member of Parliament representing the “Hayastan” faction, was targeted over his role in organizing protests during the 2022 Resistance Movement. The Yerevan Municipality filed four separate lawsuits against him, each seeking to fine him up to 300,000 AMD — totaling as much as 1.2 million AMD.
“All four cases were based on the fact that Saghatelyan helped organize protests and urgent gatherings,” wrote attorney Vahe Grigoryan, who represented Saghatelyan in court. “I represented him in each of these cases, defending his rights and freedoms in both the Administrative Court and the Administrative Court of Appeals.”
Last year, the Administrative Court dismissed all four lawsuits filed by the Mayor. However, the Municipality appealed every decision. Even after the 2023 Yerevan City Council elections, the city’s legal team did not withdraw the appeals.
One by one, those appeals have now been rejected.
In the first case (VD2/0186/05/22), the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Saghatelyan. The Mayor then brought the case to the Court of Cassation — Armenia’s highest judicial body — which refused to admit the appeal for review. That decision, Grigoryan noted, “enters into legal force from the moment it is made, is final, and not subject to appeal.”
A similar outcome followed in the second case (VD2/0178/05/22). Once again, the Court of Appeals ruled against the Mayor, and once again, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal.
“With this,” Grigoryan wrote, “the Mayor of Yerevan has now been definitively defeated in this case as well. The decision is final and legally binding.”
The rulings mark a complete legal victory for Ishkhan Saghatelyan, who was a key figure in the 2022 protest movement and remains a leading opposition voice in Armenia’s political landscape.
