The decision demanded by prosecutors came in the wake of reports about the disappearance of what an Armenian law-enforcement agency sees as its main piece of evidence against Archbishop Arshak Khachatrian.
“The repressions against the church and His Eminence Arshak are thus continuing,” said his lawyer, Arsen Babayan.
A figure close to the embattled supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Khachatrian heads the Chancellery of the church’s Mother See in Echmiadzin. He was arrested in early December on a drug-related charge rejected by him as politically motivated. The Investigative Committee claims that he had one of his aides plant a marijuana joint in the backpack of a protester who demanded Garegin’s resignation in 2018.
The joint was reportedly for years kept at the Investigative Committee division in Armenia’s Armavir province. The Yerevan daily Hraparak reported last month that the division has lost it in unclear circumstances.
The committee has still not officially refuted or confirmed the report picked up by other media outlets. But according to Babayan, an official leading the probe has “categorically” denied it.
“He said, ‘There is no such thing, no evidence has been lost,’” the lawyer told reporters.
Khachatrian was the fourth senior clergyman jailed since Pashinian began pressuring Garegin last June to step down. The Investigative Committee first arrested Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian June 25 the day before Pashinian threatened to forcibly remove the supreme head of the church from his Echmiadzin headquarters. Galastanian and his 17 supporters are now standing trial on coup charges denied by them.
Another outspoken archbishop, Mikael Ajapahian, was arrested on June 27 and subsequently sentenced to two years in prison on charges of calling for a violent regime change. The crackdown continued with the arrest later in October of Bishop Mkrtich Proshian, who is also Garegin’s nephew. Proshian, who went on trial last month, denies forcing his subordinates to attend opposition rallies held in the run-up to 2021 parliamentary elections.
Six more bishops loyal to Garegin were indicted at the weekend. The accusation levelled against them stems from the Catholicos’s decision to defrock another bishop who broke ranks in November to join Pashinian’s campaign.
The Investigative Committee did not arrest any of the six bishops. Still, it banned them from leaving Armenia to attend an emergency conference of the church’s top clergy in Austria. Their lawyers and the Mother See believe the criminal case is aimed at scuttling the conference scheduled for February 16-19. Garegin’s office has not yet clarified whether it will go ahead as planned.