YEREVAN. – The visiting ban on Shant Harutyunyan and all his friends, who are imprisoned with him, has been lifted, Harutyunyan’s wife, Ruzanna Badalyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Badalyan added that they will visit Harutyunyan, who is currently at the Prison Hospital, on Tuesday.  

The United National Initiative leader and activist Shant Harutyunyan who heads a nationalist party, and who had announced about starting a revolution, on November 5, 2013—and with close to several dozen supporters wearing Guy Fawkes “Anonymous masks”—had started a march toward the Presidential Palace, but the police had stopped the march.

As a result, there was a scuffle, and the police detained 38 activists, including Harutyunyan and his son. Subsequently, 20 of them, including Harutyunyan, were arrested, charges were laid against six of them and, consequently, they were incarcerated. As a result of the melee, sixteen people, including police officers and the Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter, were injured.

Shant Harutyunyan was charged with violence against a representative—i.e., the police—of the authorities, and on January 10, he ended a seventeen-day hunger strike.