Armenia has detained another top cleric on charges of plotting to overthrow the government in the latest clampdown on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s critics.
A court in capital Yerevan on Saturday sentenced Acrhbishop Mikael Ajapahyan to two months in pre-trial detention on charges of publicly calling for an armed ouster of the government. The Acrhbishop’s lawyer described the court ruling as “obviously illegal and unfounded”
A video posted on Armenian news sites on Friday showed security forces clashing with the crowd outside the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church near capital Yerevan as they tried to detain Ajapahyan. The security officers withdrew from the area after Ajapahyan reportedly agreed to appear before the authorities. Local media showed the Acrhbishop enter the building of Armenia’s Investigative Committee on the same day.
“I have never hidden and I am not going to hide now. 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.” Ajapahyan told reporters on Friday.
Ajapahyan is the second clergyman to be detained this week over coup attempt allegations. On Wednesday, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who leads the Sacred Struggle opposition movement, was detained on charges of plotting a sabotage campaign to overthrow Pashinyan. Galstyan rejected the charges against him as “fiction”. Thirteen more people are facing the same charges. The Sacred Struggle movement has opposed Armenia’s handover of four villages to Azerbaijan during the delimitation of the borders between the two countries. However his movement later expanded to an opposition movement against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Galstyan’s arrest marks the peak of the confrontation between the clergy and Pashinyan.
Pashinyan said earlier this week that the authorities “thwarted a “large and sinister plan by the ‘criminal-oligarchic clergy” to overthrow the government and seize power in Armenia. However, the clergy is not the only group being targeted by Pashinyan who will face an election next year. Last week, the authorities arrested Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan on charges of calling for the government overthrow, the charges that he denied.
