YEREVAN -- Five leaders of an Armenian opposition group have been sent to pretrial detention.
A spokeswoman for Armenia's Investigative Committee, Sona Truzian, told RFE/RL on April 10 that the five leaders of the Constituent Parliament group had been sent to pretrial detention for two months.
The organization's chairman, Garegin Chugaszian, and four other leaders were detained on April 8 on suspicion of organizing mass disorder.
The Constituent Parliament had announced plans to organize antigovernment protests during events on April 24, marking the 100th anniversary of what Armenia considers genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks.
The World War I-era mass slaughter and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians is considered by many historians and several nations to be genocide. Turkey objects, saying that Armenians died in much smaller numbers and because of civil strife rather than a planned Ottoman government effort to annihilate a Christian minority.
