YEREVAN. – The ruling on the detainment of actor Vardan Petrosyan will be appealed at court on Wednesday, Petrosyan’s attorney Nikolay Baghdasaryan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.  

In addition, the defense will submit an appeal to the Court of Cassation in connection with the two-month extension of Petrosyan’s detention period.   

The attorney informed that he studied the respective court decision and the investigator’s motion, and he stressed that both of them are identical in terms of spelling errors and the absence or presence of commas and spaces.

“It is apparent that they have copy-pasted; that is, the outcome of the trial was determined before the start of the [court] session. 

“This is a very perilous phenomenon for Armenia. It means that the courts can detain any person; that is, the court will approve whatever restraining order the investigative body would motion,” Nikolay Baghdasaryan stated.

To note, a major accident occurred on October 20, 2013, in Kotayk Region. A BMW and a VAZ 2121-model vehicle crashed at around 9:20pm on the Yeghvard-Yerevan motorway. As a result, seven people sustained injuries and were transferred to several hospitals. Among them was famous actor and comedian Vardan Petrosyan. As a result of the accident, however, brothers Edgar and Eduard Hakobyan—who were passengers in the VAZ 2121—had died.

A criminal case was instituted on the incident, and Vardan Petrosyan was formally detained on charges of vehicular manslaughter. In addition, the Court of Cassation denied the petition to commute Vardan Petrosyan’s restraining order. Subsequently, a general jurisdiction court ruled in favor of the investigator’s motion to extend Petrosyan’s restraining order for two more months.