28 June,2025 10:55 PM IST | Yerevan | mid-day online correspondent
Supporters of arrested Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church Bagrat Galstanyan, accused of trying to mastermind the attempted coup, rally outside the Avansky court in Yerevan. Pic/AFP
Armenia has arrested a second prominent cleric on charges of plotting against the government, marking the latest escalation in a clampdown on outspoken critics of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, reported AP.
A court in Yerevan on Saturday ordered Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan to be held in pre-trial detention for two months, according to his lawyer, Ara Zohrabyan. Zohrabyan called the decision "obviously illegal and unfounded," confirming his client would appeal.
State prosecutors accuse Ajapahyan of publicly calling for an armed ouster of the government.
On Friday, security forces confronted crowds at the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church outside Yerevan as they attempted to arrest Ajapahyan. Videos circulated on social media showing clergymen jostling with police, while nearby cathedral bells rang out.
After Armenia's National Security Service urged Ajapahyan to present himself to authorities, local media showed him entering the building of Armenia's Investigative Committee in his grey robes, reported AP.
"I have never hidden and I am not going to hide now," Ajapahyan told reporters on Friday. "I say that what is happening now is lawlessness. I have never been and am not a threat to this country; the main threat is in the government."
Last year, tens of thousands of demonstrators called for Pashinyan's removal after Armenia agreed to hand over control of several border villages to Azerbaijan and to normalise relations between the neighbours and bitter rivals.
On Wednesday, authorities arrested Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who leads the Sacred Struggle opposition movement. He was also accused of plotting a sabotage campaign to overthrow Pashinyan, charges that his lawyer dismissed as 'fiction'.
Members of Sacred Struggle, which has bitterly opposed the handover of the border villages, accused the government of cracking down on political rights, AP reported. While the territorial concession was the movement's core issue, it has broadened to include a wide array of complaints about Pashinyan, who assumed power in 2018.
In another development, Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, another vocal critic of Pashinyan, was arrested last week on charges of calling for the government's overthrow, which he denied.
According to AP, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been embroiled in territorial disputes since the early 1990s, a period when various parts of the Soviet Union sought independence from Moscow. Following the USSR's collapse in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatist forces, backed by the Armenian military, gained control of Azerbaijan's region of Karabakh and nearby territories.
However, in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured significant swathes of territory that had been held by Armenian forces for nearly three decades. A swift military campaign in September 2023 saw Azerbaijan fully reclaim control of Karabakh, and Armenia subsequently handed over the contested border villages.
Pashinyan has recently endeavoured to normalise relations with Azerbaijan. Last week, he also visited Azerbaijan's key ally, Turkiye, in an effort to mend a historic rift.
Türkiye and Armenia share a more than century-old dispute concerning the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in massacres, deportations, and forced marches that began in 1915 in Ottoman Türkiye. Historians largely consider these events a genocide. Türkiye vehemently rejects this label, acknowledging that many died during that era but insisting the death toll is inflated and resulted from civil unrest.
Attempts to impeach Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018, have been unsuccessful.
Although territorial concessions formed the core issue for Sacred Struggle, their complaints against Pashinyan have expanded considerably as the Apostolic Church's relationship with the government deteriorated. On 8 June, Pashinyan called for church leader Karekin II to resign, accusing him of fathering a child despite a vow of celibacy.
The Church, at the time, released a statement accusing Pashinyan of undermining Armenia's "spiritual unity" but did not address the claim about the child.
(With inputs from AP)
