Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian was taken into custody along with his 15 supporters in June 2025 amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s controversial efforts to oust the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. They as well as two other individuals were charged with plotting “terrorist acts” in a bid to seize power.
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 faced corresponding murder charges, however. Virtually all of them were set free or moved to house arrest after the start of their trial in August.
The judge presiding over the trial has repeatedly refused to release Galstanian from prison pending a verdict in the case. Armenia’s Court of Appeals moved him to house arrest, acting on an appeal filed by his lawyers. Galstanian was not satisfied with the decision, insisting that he must be set free and acquitted altogether.
As Pashinian stepped up pressure on Catholicos Garegin II, two other archbishops and one bishop were also arrested later in 2025 on different charges strongly denied by them. They all were placed under house arrest early this year. Around the same time, a law-enforcement agency indicted six other bishops and Garegin himself but refrained from arresting them. The supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church made clear on Tuesday that he will not resign even if he is arrested after Armenia’s June 7 parliamentary elections.
Galstanian headed the church diocese in Armenia’s 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.
