Armenia is heading steadily towards dictatorship, Vahe Hakobyan, an MP from the opposition Hayastan faction and leader of the Reviving Armenia party, said on Thursday, referring to the arrest of judge Boris Bakhshiyan.

A judge of the Syunik Court of General Jurisdiction, Bakhshiyan was arrested on Monday after he ordered the release of oppositionist and war veteran Ashot Minasyan. Bakhshiyan is accused of illegally arresting a defendant in a trial presided over by him.

"Our country is moving steadily towards dictatorship, while the arrest of judge Boris Bakhshiyan was the last nail in the coffin of the judicial system and justice," Hakobyan told a briefing in the parliament, blaming the European institutions for remaining silent.

“This, willy-nilly, leads us to the conclusion that the Armenian government and the European Union structures have entered into a political bargain. We wonder what promises the Armenian authorities, particularly Nikol Pashinyan, have made for the EU institutions to remain silent,” the lawmaker noted.

Speaking at the briefing, famous doctor and Hayastan faction MP Armen Charchyan, who was released from custody in December last year, stated that Bakhshiyan's arrest was a serious and bad precedent.

In the meantime, Charchyan underlined there is a fundamental difference between Boris Bakhshiyan and Rubik Mkhitaryan, the judge who ordered his arrest, because the Constitutional Court confirmed that Mkhitaryan’s decision to arrest him was illegal.

He unveiled plans to bring Rubik Mkhitaryan to account for the illegalities.