Veronika Mikaelian worked as a senior specialist at the State Committee for Real Estate Cadaster until her September 9 dismissal regarded by her as unfair. In her words, her husband reacted to the dismissal with angry voice messages sent to the head of the committee, Suren Tovmasian.
“I don’t want to publicize the content of the messages,” Mikaelian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “He obviously wasn’t going to say thank you [to Tovmasian.]”
A couple of days later, Mikaelian went on, her husband was kidnapped, driven outside Yerevan and beaten up by a large group of men who she believes acted on Tovmasian’s orders.
“They hit him nonstop until he lost consciousness … During the beating, they kept saying, ‘You said this to Suro [Tovmasian,] now eat it.’ It’s therefore obvious that they were executing an order,” she said.
Mikaelian’s husband, who suffered many injuries to his body, refused to be interviewed or even identified. The man too used to work at the State Committee for Real Estate Cadaster. He resigned from it a few years ago because of what his wife described as a conflict with Tovmasian.
A spokesperson for committee denied Tovmasian’s involvement in the violence that led Armenia’s Investigative Committee to launch a criminal inquiry. The law-enforcement agency did not indict anyone as of Wednesday. It is not clear whether it has questioned Tovmasian.
The latter is affiliated with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party. The party has not yet commented on the allegations directed at the official.
Government officials affiliated with and/or installed by Civil Contract are periodically accused of violent conduct by their alleged victims or media. An Armenian journalist, Hakob Karapetian, claims to have been beaten up by a masked man late last week after being verbally abused and threatened by a senior official from the Yerevan mayor’s office.
Earlier this year, the heads of two administrative districts of Yerevan lost their jobs after being prosecuted on assault charges.