Hundreds of members and supporters of the National Democratic Alliance (AZhB) peacefully marched through the city center when they were unexpectedly confronted by riot police units. Scores of them were detained on the spot before they could even approach any government building in the Armenian capital.

Armenia’s Interior Ministry accused them of ignoring “legitimate” police orders. It did not explain why the police used force in the first place.

A ministry spokesman put the total number of arrests at 96. The figure is unusually big for a single rally held in the country.

An AZhB activist, Hermine Mkrtchian, claimed that many of the detained protesters were beaten up in police custody. Law-enforcement authorities did not immediately comment on the claim.

Earlier on Wednesday, several dozen AZhB supporters jeered Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s wife, Anna Hakobian, after spotting her at Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert memorial during an annual remembrance of victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide. They chanted “Genocidal Nikol!” “Nikol traitor!” and other hostile slogans as Hakobian and one of her daughters laid flowers by the memorial’s eternal fire.

The AZhB has grown increasingly critical of Pashinian in recent years. Just like Armenia’s mainstream opposition, the fringe group has strongly condemned Pashinian’s controversial decision to cede four border areas to Azerbaijan.

Late last month, three men linked to the AZhB detonated a hand grenade at the entrance to a Yerevan police station in protest against the planned territorial concession. They were arrested and charged with “terrorism.”

Investigators searched AZhB offices and the homes of the group’s leaders in the following days. None of them was indicted as a result.

The AZhB leadership has close ties to jailed members of an armed group that stormed another Yerevan police facility in 2016 to demand then President Serzh Sarkisian’s resignation. The three dozen gunmen laid down their weapons after a two-week standoff with security forces which left three police officers dead.

All but two of them were released from custody shortly after Sarkisian was toppled in the 2018 “velvet revolution” led by Pashinian. The seven key members of the group called Sasna Tsrer were sent back to jail in May 2022.