Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan won a case against the Armenian state at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for his imprisonment a decade before he came to power.

Pashinyan sued Armenia in 2010 for his arrest and conviction following the deadly 2008 crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Pashinyan’s government, as a defendant in the case, did not comment in court on the allegations made against it by the prime minister.

In a judgment of January 18, the ECHR ruled that the Armenian authorities had violated Pashinyan’s rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, liberty and security.

Pashinyan did not ask for any material compensation in his request.

The state was represented in the case by Yeghisheh Kirakosyan, who was appointed Armenia’s representative to the ECHR by the Pashinyan government in 2018, after briefly serving as an adviser to the prime minister.

The decision was the latest in a series of judgments issued by the ECHR against Armenia following the 2008 crackdown on numerous violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.

A deadly crackdown on the opposition

Pashinyan was arrested in July 2009 for attempting to “overthrow the constitutional order”. He was sentenced to seven years in prison but was released in 2011 as part of a pardon marking the 20th anniversary of Armenia’s independence.

He was convicted for his role in supporting protests against the results of the 2008 presidential election, which saw Robert Kocharyan come to power.

At the time, Pashinyan was an opposition activist and the editor of Haykakan Zhamanak (The Armenian Times).

The protests were organized in late February by Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who lost to Kocharyan in what the opposition called a rigged election.

At least ten people died, including two police officers, when authorities broke up the protests on March 1, 2008.

After coming to power in 2018, Pashinyan returned to the events of March 1. In July 2018, authorities brought charges against Kocharyan and his allies under the same article used to arrest Pashinyan in 2009: overthrowing the constitutional order.

Charges against Kocharyan, who now leads the largest opposition party, were dismissed in March 2021 by Armenia’s Constitutional Court.

[Read more: Armenia’s top court dismisses Kocharyan case as ‘unconstitutional’]