Hakob Manukian, another judge of the court of first instance in Vagharshapat, a town encompassing the Echmiadzin seat of the Catholicos, opened the trial on August 7. Manukian refused to continue it a few minutes later, citing a conflict of interest.
The case was then assigned to his colleague Serzh Rushanian. The 29-year-old judge ruled on August 28 that Garegin and six archbishops and bishops should be tried by a court in Yerevan.
But one of its judges was also reluctant to preside over the trial condemned by the Armenian Church and government critics as a travesty of justice. Armenia’s Court of Cassation last week sent the case back to Rushanian, saying that it falls under his jurisdiction.
As was the case on August 28, Garegin and the other defendants chose not to attend the court hearing. They are facing accusations stemming from the defrocking in January this year of a pro-government bishop involved in Pashinian’s controversial campaign. Their lawyers maintain that Armenian courts and law-enforcement bodies have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs because Armenia’s constitution guarantees the ancient church’s independence and separation from the state.
The lawyers repeated their arguments during Friday’s hearing, petitioning Rushanian to throw out the charges. They also suggested that he appeal to Armenia’s Constitutional Court if he sees “procedural hurdles” to making such a decision. The judge said he will rule on these petitions at the next court hearing which he scheduled for October 30.
“The state has no right to decide who should be a bishop,” Ara Zohrabian, one of the defense lawyers, insisted during the latest hearing.
The church’s Supreme Spiritual Council again condemned the “repressions” against the top clergy and accused the Armenian authorities of violating the constitution following a three-day session that concluded on Thursday.
“The Supreme Spiritual Council deemed unacceptable the authorities’ ongoing policy of interfering in the internal life of the Church,” it said in a statement released on Friday.
Pashinian began pressuring Garegin to resign in June 2025 shortly after the Catholicos accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. Three Armenian archbishops and one bishop were arrested in the following months on different charges strongly denied by them. They all were moved to house arrest this year.