Yerevan, Armenia – YEREVANS, Armenia (AP) — A prominent Armenian clergyman was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday after being convicted of seeking to overthrow the government.
Archbishop Michael Ajapahyan was arrested in June and accused of being part of Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan of coup planning against the government.
The clergyman was found guilty of seeking the government to overthrow on September 24th. His lawyer, Ara Zorabiyan, accused the verdict of politically motivating.
Ajapahiyan was charged with merely expressing his opinion, Zorabiyan said.
The Armenian Apostle Church also accused the verdict of politically motivating, describing it as “one of the clear symptoms of the authorities' anti-church campaign.”
Authorities tried to detain Ajapahyan in June, which led to security forces fighting the crowd at the headquarters of the Apostolic Church in Armenia. Videos circulating online showed police and a shaking clergy.
After Armenian National Security Agency urged Ajapahyan to appear before the authorities, local media indicated he would enter into the construction of the Armenian investigation committee. The following day, the Yerevan court ordered Ajapahyan to be placed in pretrial detention.
Ajapahiyan's arrest followed the arrest of Archbishop Bagrat Garstaghan, who led the protests of the sacred struggle. He was accused of planning a sabotage campaign to overthrow Pashinyan, and accused his lawyer of rejecting it as “fiction.”
In April 2024, tens of thousands of demonstrators sought the expulsion of Pashinyan after Armenia handed over control of several border villages to Azerbaijan and agreed to normalize relations between neighbors.
The sacred struggle is deeply opposed to the extradition of border villages. Territorial concessions were central to the movement, but expanded to broader complaints about Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018.
Pashinyan's other voice critic, Russian BC billionaire Samvel Karapetian, was arrested in June for asking for the government to be overthrown, but he denied.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been trapped in territorial conflicts since the early 1990s, as various regions of the Soviet Union are seeking independence from Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenian separatist tribal forces supported by Armenian forces gained control of the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and nearby territories.
In 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured a wide range of Karabakh and its surrounding territory. The Lightning military campaign in September 2023 saw Azerbaijan fully regain control of the region, and Armenia later handed over the border village.
In August, Armenia and Azerbaijani leaders shook hands at the White House Summit before signing a deal aimed at ending decades of conflict. At that meeting, a formal peace treaty was launched by foreign ministers of both countries, but it has not yet been signed by the leaders and ratified by the country's parliament.