YEREVAN, JANUARY 5, ARMENPRESS. The man who was behind authoring a fake news report through a fake Facebook account which made it to Azerbaijani headlines has been detained by the Armenian National Security Service (NSS).

The suspect ran a Facebook account by the name of Diana Harutyunyan and used the account to spread false information, the latest of which was a fake report claiming that Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has congratulated US President Donald Trump on the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani. Azerbaijani news media even cited this fake report and published it in their local outlets. The report was also published in the Iranian press. This fake report was refuted on the same day, but the seriousness of the matter in question made PM Pashinyan personally comment earlier : “This is the case when the fake “freedom” of speech has created a threat for our national security. The authors of the report and their motives must be revealed”.

“The public distribution of fake news with such content aimed at inciting ethnic, racial and religious hostility, manipulation in the information-propaganda arena has inflicted significant damage to the national security interests of the Republic of Armenia,” the NSS said on January 5.

The NSS said it revealed the suspect and detained him.

In an NSS video, the suspect – whose identity is not disclosed at the moment – is claiming that he is an oppositionist of the government and disapproves the jailing of former president Robert Kocharyan and that’s why he was running the fake account since 2018 and was spreading disinformation to defame the authorities.

The suspect says he did not intend to cause damage to the national security and did not think that the fake news report authored by him would be re-published to that extent. He said he regrets having written the fake report.

The suspect has been placed under arrest amid an ongoing investigation.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan