French-Armenian community leader and ARF Bureau member Mourad Papazian is taking legal action against the Armenian authorities over the decision to ban him from entering Armenia, he said in a social media post on Thursday.

“I have decided to start legal proceedings to restore my rights, entrusting MP Artsvik Minasyan to represent me in the court and asking lawyer Siranush Sahakyan to take the necessary legal action,” he wrote.

Papazian noted that Minasyan sent a letter to the National Security Service on July 25 asking it to scrap the ban.

“Under the law, the NSS has five days to respond to it, and based on that we will decide our further steps,” he added.

Papazian, a co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France (CCAF), was barred from entering Armenia on July 13 after his plane landed at Yerevan's Zvartnots Airport. 

One of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s unnamed aides said that Papazian was barred from entering Armenia under the domestic law because he was one of the organizers of the attack on Pashinyan’s motorcade in Paris on June 1, 2021. Papazian denies the accusations.