Virtually all of them were arrested on June 25 amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial efforts to oust the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church opposed to his concessions to Azerbaijan. Two of them were subsequently released from custody.
The suspects led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian stand accused of plotting “terrorist acts” in a bid to seize power. According to the Investigative Committee, they planned to paralyze Armenia’s security apparatus for that purpose.
Shortly after the arrests, Prosecutor-General Anna Vardapetian claimed that Galstanian and his supporters wanted to assassinate Pashinian and other senior officials. None of the suspects is facing corresponding murder charges, however.
The accusations levelled against them are essentially based on the audio of Galstanian’s wiretapped conversations with his associates which was partly publicized by investigators and circulated by Pashinian’s political allies later in June. Voices attributed to them can be heard discussing plans to set up dozens of small groups of men who would block streets, cut off electricity supply and Internet connection and cause other disruptions to help crowds topple the government.
Lawyers representing the suspects gained full access to the recordings during the subsequent investigation. One of them, Hovannes Khudoyan, published their lengthy transcripts last week. He said they prove that the authorities doctored, distorted or took the audio out of context in a bid to substantiate the “trumped-up” charges and mislead the public. His claims have been echoed by other defense lawyers.
The Investigative Committee also publicized in June what it called a copy of a “coup plan” devised by Galstanian. The alleged plan was supposed to be executed it in July-August 2024, rather than this year, as was claimed by a pro-government website.
Galstanian and the 17 defendants, among them opposition lawmaker Artur Sargsian, again pleaded not guilty to the accusations when they appeared before a Yerevan court. The outspoken archbishop remained defiant as he briefly talked to reporters in the small courtroom packed with police officers.
Galstanian headed the Armenian Apostolic Church diocese in the northern Tavush province until leading in May and June 2024 anti-government protests sparked by Pashinian's controversial territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. After failing to scuttle the land transfer, he rallied tens of thousands of people in Yerevan to demand Pashinian’s resignation.
Virtually all Armenian opposition forces joined or endorsed the Galstanian-led movement as it gained momentum in May 2024. But some of them subsequently criticized the archbishop for lacking a clear roadmap to regime change.
The day after Galstanian’s arrest, Pashinian threatened to forcibly remove Catholicos Garegin from his Echmiadzin headquarters if the supreme head of the Armenian Church continues to ignore his demands to resign. Security forces raided the Mother See the next morning in a bid to arrest Archbishop Mikael Ajapahian, another vocal critic of the prime minister. But they failed to do that after meeting with fierce resistance from hundreds of angry priests and laymen.
Ajapahian surrendered to investigators several hours after the unprecedented raid. He was charged with calling for a violent regime change, an accusation he and other critics of Pashinian reject as politically motivated. Ajapahian’s trial began last Friday.