YEREVAN. – The legal defense team of Gagik Tsarukyan—opposition Prosperous Armenia Party  (PAP) leader, head of its parliamentary faction, and business tycoon—has filed an appeal with the court. Smbat Minasyan, one of Tsarukyan's lawyers, wrote about this on his Facebook page.

"I inform you that we have filed an appeal against the decision of the court of first instance of general jurisdiction of the city of Yerevan to examine the motion to apply arrest as a pretrial measure against our client Gagik Tsarukyan.

We have asked the court to consider as substantiated the absence of a reasonable doubt, the fact of violation of a number of other issues raised by us in investigative subordination and at the first instance court," he wrote.