Arrested opposition mayoral candidate dies in Armenia
Arsen Gevorkyan, a member of the opposition "Strong Armenia" party who was running for mayor of Stepanavan, died of a heart attack in a pretrial detention facility.
The information was confirmed to Sputnik Armenia by Samvel Karapetyan's party.
No other details were available at this hour.
Gevorkyan, as a candidate for mayor of Stepanavan, was arrested for a term of two months on October 21 — literally four days before the municipal elections — on charges of giving a bribe.
Prior to that, the Anti-Corruption Committee published a video claiming that the footage showed bribes being handed out to voters at the opposition candidate's office. A total of 24 people have been detained in the Stepanavan bribery case, among them four candidates for the Council of Elders.
Elections to the Council of Elders of the enlarged community of Stepanavan in the Lori region were held on October 25, and they were won by the pro-government candidate, Armen Grigoryan, a member of the newly created "Gortsarar" ("Entrepreneur") party.
