Archbishop Ajapahian denies accusations of calling for seizure of power
Armenian security forces detained Archbishop Mikael Ajapakhian, he was charged with calling for the seizure of power. Ajapakhian claimed his innocence.
As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, on the morning of June 27, security forces conducted a search in the building of the Shirak diocese in connection with the case of Archbishop Mikael Ajapakhian, suspected of calling for the violent overthrow of the government. At the same time, Ajapakhian's lawyer was forbidden to be present during the search. The archbishop, who was in Echmiadzin, declared his readiness to go with the security forces who arrived there, but the crowd surrounded the car and prevented him from being detained. After this, Ajapakhyan decided to go to Yerevan and appear before the Investigative Committee.
On June 25, security forces conducted more than 90 searches in connection with the case of preparing to seize power in Armenia. By a court decision, the leader of the Sacred Struggle movement, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan and 14 other people were taken into custody. A day earlier, on June 24, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that a coup d'etat had been prevented and published a document with the text of the opposition's alleged plan to remove him from power. "Caucasian Knot" has prepared a report "The Main Thing About Political Arrests in Armenia in June 2025".
On June 27, Mikael Ajapayan came to the Investigative Committee, accompanied by officers of the National Security Service. He was charged under Part 2 of Article 422 of the Criminal Code (public calls for the seizure of power, violation of territorial integrity, renunciation of sovereignty or violent overthrow of the constitutional order), which provides for two to five years of imprisonment, News.am reported.
Ajapayan did not admit the charge brought against him
The archbishop rejected the charge, said his lawyer Ara Zohrabyan. "Mikael Ajapayan did not admit the charges brought against him. The investigator requested his arrest. The court must make a decision on his arrest within 24 hours," the publication quoted him as saying.
The charges are "obviously unfounded," Zohrabyan emphasized. "The entire process of attempted arrest and interrogation was accompanied by incorrect and misleading notes from Nikol Pashinyan to the preliminary investigation and the court," Novosti-Armenia quoted the lawyer as saying.
Zohrabyan assessed this as "another illegal step in the anti-church process by the authorities," the publication writes.
We recall that in 2024, Bagrat Galstanyan led the "Tavush for the Motherland" protest movement (now called "Sacred Struggle"), which opposed the transfer of border territories to Azerbaijan, and was nominated by opposition forces for the post of Prime Minister of Armenia.
Archbishop Mikael Ajapakhyan in May of the same year, participated in the protest The Armenian Apostolic Church intensified in 2020 amid the 44-day Karabakh war and the government's desire to improve relations with Turkey. It escalated in late May when Pashinyan said that in Armenia "all the most unnecessary things are stored in churches" and expressed surprise at "how much one can be false, talk about the holy and be an atheist, trample on the holy places." Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan responded by noting that since 2019 the church had unsuccessfully appealed to government agencies regarding the preservation of holy places that have the status of monuments. Pashinyan responded with insults. After this, Armenian politicians and church representatives demanded an apology from Pashinyan, and he called for the election of a new head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.