The Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office did not grant Samvel Karapetyan permission to deliver a video address, his lawyer Aram Vardevanyan said, commenting on an AI-generated video shown during a party presentation and related media reports, according to 24news.am.
The lawyer noted that the restriction on making public statements has been lifted, but the possibility of speaking in an audiovisual format has not been established by any legal act.
Vardevanyan stressed that a formal request was submitted both to the investigative body and to the supervising prosecutor to ensure Karapetyan’s ability to deliver a public video address.
“However, the response received from the investigative body was essentially equivalent to a refusal, and no response has been received from the Prosecutor’s Office to date. Given that in Karapetyan’s case detention was applied as a preventive measure for about 200 days solely for the phrase ‘participating in the defense of the Church in our own way,’ I believe it is more than clear what position the defense team had to take: whether such a video address would be permissible or not, and whether it would be considered a possible violation of the conditions of the preventive measure.
Therefore, we can state that the investigative body and the Prosecutor’s Office did not give Samvel Karapetyan the opportunity to deliver a video address. Moreover, perhaps this discussion is a good occasion to note that the political persecution against Karapetyan, which began on June 17, 2025, has already taken on another character. As an active participant in the political process, he faces unequal conditions stemming precisely from political persecution carried out by representatives of the authorities formed by another political force. Consequently, in the current situation, when the preventive measure has been applied for around eight months and there has not been even the slightest mention of any violation, it is evident that the preventive measure imposed on Karapetyan must be lifted immediately, also from the standpoint of ensuring political and civil rights, competition and equality guarantees,” he said.
During the official presentation of the Strong Armenia party at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex, a video (created using artificial intelligence) featured the party’s candidate for prime minister, Samvel Karapetyan, stating that their program would be the most realistic and the best.
