Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan was ordered released “immediately” from pre-trial detention by an Appeals Court Judge on March 5, making him the third senior clergy member of the Armenian Apostolic Church to have his detention eased in the past month.
Following his release from the National Security Service after three months of pre-trial detention, he told reporters he remained steadfast in his positions — namely his unflinching support for the Armenian Apostolic Church and its leader, the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II.
“I remember when they used to call these ‘correctional labor camps,’” the archbishop said, referring to the Soviet-era detention centers known as the gulag.
“I am happy to say I remain incorrect,” he added wryly. “Nothing has changed in my views or positions.”
Archbishop Khachatryan, Chancellor of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiatzin, was detained on 4 December 2025, accused of planting drugs on an anti-Catholicos agitator in 2018. He has denied all charges.
That individual was part of a movement called “New Armenia, New Catholicos,” regarded as the first attempt by Nikol Pashinyan’s government to infringe on the autonomy of the national church. Other early moves included the removal of Armenian Church History from the state school curriculum. Books for this course are also distributed to Armenian schools around the worldwide diaspora.
The 52-year-old archbishop is seen as a fearless and unbreakable member of the senior clergy, and his detention seemed to remove a key shield of the Catholicos.
“There will be no retreat by the Catholicos,” Archbishop Khachatryan told reporters upon his release on March 5.
From Scrutiny to Condemnation
Archbishop Khachatryan is the third high-ranking clergy member in Armenia to have his detention eased by an appeals judge in the past month — in tandem with growing international scrutiny.
Over the past month, leading religious freedom advocates have been ramping up condemnations of Prime Minister Pashinyan’s attempts to bring the 1,700-year-old Armenian Apostolic Church under state control.
The International Religious Freedom Summit put a spotlight on Yerevan’s campaign against the church in late, expressing hope that a recent visit by US Vice President J.D. Vance to Armenia would prompt official inquiry.
“International recognition of challenges in the region is important, and we hope that the Vice President’s visits will spark conversation about the often-ignored threats to religious freedom in Armenia,” the IRF Summit’s monthly newsletter said.
“Azerbaijan is destroying religious heritage sites in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and continues to hold Armenian prisoners of war, while the Armenian government itself has ramped up aggression against the Apostolic Church within its own borders,” it added.
The warning followed a flurry of advocacy at and surrounding the IRF 2026 summit in early February.
At the summit, Aram Vardavanyan — lawyer to Armenian Apostolic Church benefactor Samvel Karapetyan, who today is confined under house arrest for voicing his support for the church on national televsion — gave a speech warning of the Armenian government’s ratcheting moves to seize control of the church.
On February 3, the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe on February 3 issued an alert warning of a “series of aggressive moves” by Pashinyan’s administration against the Armenian Apostolic Church, which constitute “grave threats” to religious freedom in the world’s first Christian nation.
FOREF flagged the dissolution of Armenia’s military chaplaincy program and placing of travel bans on senior clergy ahead of a key episcopal assembly in Austria as particularly alarming.
“We are witnessing unlawful actions directed against religious freedom and the constitution in Armenia,” said FOREF president Jan Figel. He warned that “this is detrimental not only for the church but for the whole country and for the whole nation.”
Additionally, on February 6, Forum 18 published an extensive report on the government’s attack on the church.
The report, authored by renowned Armenia expert Felix Corley, noted that, “Since at least May 2025, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has led a campaign to oust the head of Armenia’s largest religious community, Catholicos Karekin of the Armenian Apostolic Church.”
“Pashinyan has also tried to subjugate the Armenian Church to the state,” Corley wrote, “despite the Constitutional separation of the state from religious communities. State agencies have pressured clergy to cut ties with the Catholicos and targeted bishops and priests who have remained loyal to him.”
Visit to a Jailed Archbishop
In parallel to the IRF Summit and FOREF statement, Christian Solidarity International made its second fact-finding mission to Armenia in three months.
The four-member delegation, comprising CSI President Dr. John Eibner, Director of Advocacy Dr. Joel Veldkamp, CSI-Germany CEO Father Peter Fuchs, and Swiss MP Erich Vontobel, on visited Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan in jail in Yerevan February 3.
While the delegation had hoped to offer hope to the jailed clergyman, they remarked that it was Archbishop Bagrat who provided inspiration to them.
CSI held a joint press conference with the Armenian Center for Political Rights (ACPR) the same day, highlighting the dangers the seizure of the Armenian Apostolic Church would portend for a nation under sustained threat of genocide from neighboring Turkey and Azerbaijan.
ACPR for its part highlighted the illegality of the government’s infringement on the autonomy of the church.
Just over a week later, an Armenian appeals court judge on February 12 granted house arrest to Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan. The Primate of Aragatsotn Diocese, a nephew of the Catholicos, had spent nearly four months in pre-trial detention.
On February 17, Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan was similarly transferred from prison to house arrest following a hospital surgery. The Primate of Shirak Diocese was arrested in June and has been serving a two-year prison sentence for allegedly plotting an overthrow of the government, a conviction his legal team seeks to overturn.
Today, only Archbishop Galstanyan remains in pre-trial detention, in a process marred by fabricated evidence.
He was the first senior clergyman detained in Pashinyan’s evolving crackdown against the Armenian Apostolic Church.
On February 26, Eibner and Figel participated in a briefing on the persecution of the Armenian church on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, along with former Ambassador Alberto Fernandez.
Figel drew parallels between the Armenian government’s anti-church campaign and the struggle against communism in his native Slovakia.
In communist Czechoslovakia, “The church, Christianity, and faith represented the most decisive opposition to the regime,” Figel said. “It takes time, but it will win.”
