15:40,

YEREVAN, MAY 20, ARMENPRESS. The woman suspected of attempting to kidnap Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s son Ashot Pashinyan has been jailed in pre-trial detention for one month.

Lawyer Vahan Hovhannisyan told reporters that her client, Gayane Hakobyan, was remanded by a Yerevan court for 1 month.

The court denied a motion filed by Hovhannisyan disputing the lawfulness of the remand.

The lawyer said he was perplexed by the decision.

Hakobyan, a mother of an Armenian soldier killed during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, was detained on suspicion of attempting to kidnap Ashot Pashinyan on May 17. The incident happened when Ashot Pashinyan ran into a group of parents of fallen soldiers on a street in Yerevan outside a courthouse.

Gayane Hakobyan offered the PM’s son to get into her car to chat as the parents recognized and approached him.

Then, according to Ashot Pashinyan, the woman took off and began displaying “inappropriate behavior” as she began to talk about the 2020 war, territorial and human losses and began speeding. Ashot Pashinyan said he told the woman to stop the car but she refused to do so and said that “her son was taken from her and killed, she has nothing to lose, she could kill him, and thus she is taking him to Yerablur [military cemetery], where she will decide to release him or not based on her emotions,” according to the testimony filed by the PM’s son to police.

PM Pashinyan's son managed to jump out of the car but was hit by another vehicle that carried several other parents of fallen troops, injuring his leg. 

Gayane Hakobyan has been on a hunger strike since her arrest.