Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan is serving a two-year prison sentence in Armenia. Photo credit: Narek Aleksanyan
YEREVAN – Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan, one of Armenia’s most venerated clergymen, is known for his dedication to his flock in the eastern Shirak Diocese as much as his blunt indictments of society and elites.
Born in Armenia’s second city of Gyumri in 1963, he graduated from the Gevorkian Seminary at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiatzin in 1987, after which he oversaw the Church’s response to the 1988 Spitak earthquake. Ajapahyan went on to receive his Master of Oriental Ecclesiastical Sciences in 1997 from the Papal Orthodox Institute of Rome.
Ajapahyan’s service to the Armenian Apostolic Church took him from Artsakh to India, and finally back to his home flock in Gyumri, where he has served as the Primate of Shirak Diocese since 2001.
Today, he sits behind bars.
The 62-year-old is serving a two-year sentence handed down by a judge loyal to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on 3 October 2025.
In late December, he underwent surgery. Prosecutors are nonetheless seeking to increase his jail time by another six months.
Prosecutor’s U-Turn
Ajapahyan has openly stated since the height of the 2020 war for Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) that Armenia’s generals must carry out a coup d’etat in order to save the nation.
“At the time when that sicko—while drunk—was proclaiming that no one should doubt his ability to be the supreme commander, I said that a military coup was necessary. And I’ve been saying it since then: a military coup is necessary,” he told Oragir news on 26 September 2023.
Ajapahyan lamented, “But we didn’t have a proper army, we didn’t have the general staff to take the necessary steps to save the state and Artsakh. They didn’t act, and the blame is on them. More blame is on them than on this mentally ill person.”
That interview was later flagged by figures close to the ruling party.
Daniel Ionisyan, a public figure engaged in re-writing Armenia’s constitution, requested in a 25 April 2024 letter to Armenia’s Prosecutor General that the Archbishop be investigated – arguing that his words constituted an illegal call for the seizure of power under Article 422 of Armenia’s Criminal Code.
The Office of the Prosecutor General dismissed that request days later, saying that the primate did not commit any crime in his statement.
But that assessment changed when Pashinyan launched his campaign against the Armenian Apostolic Church the following year, first targeting the Catholicos of All Armenians with Facebook posts, then moving to the physical detention of senior clergy.
A Politically-Motivated Prosecution
On 27 June 2025, hundreds of masked and armed internal security agents arrived at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiatzin to detain Ajapahyan. Faithful members of the church rallied at the Mother See, blocking the police and forcing them into retreat.
But Ajapahyan emerged with the Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II, telling the crowds he feared nothing and that he would go himself to the Investigative Committee.
He was detained and convicted through a hasty trial, where the outcome was preordained.
Civil society groups in Armenia condemned the conviction as politically motivated. A joint statement by ten human rights NGOs in Armenia noted that, “In other proceedings initiated on similar grounds to the crime Archbishop Ajapahyan was charged with, the trial was conducted over longer periods of time and no person found guilty of a similar act actually served any imprisonment.”
The Armenian human rights expert Zaruhi Hovhannisyan argues that Ajapahyan meets the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) definition of a political prisoner.
The chairman of Armenia’s Investigative Committee, asked to explain how the archbishop could be convicted for a statement that prosecutors had previously ruled was not a crime, said that the timing had changed the implications of the Archbishop’s words, and that they now risked “shaping public will and consciousness, creating a desire for these actions – actions aimed at seizing power – to emerge in society.”
The Yerevan-based Armenian Center for Political Rights pushed back against the Investigative Committee’s change in tack in a December 2025 report.
“A logical contradiction arises here: if the ’call for a military coup’ was directed at the heads of the security forces, what relevance does the alleged potential to incite the general public have?
“The prosecution itself emphasizes that the ‘target audience of the call’ was high-ranking military officers and security force leaders, not an undefined mass of people.”
The ACPR points out that no members of the Armenian armed forces or the National Security Service, who are subordinate to Pashinyan, have been identified as suspects in any purported coup plot.
Archbishop Ajapahyan rejects all charges against him, and his lawyers continue to appeal the court’s verdict.
In a statement before his sentencing, Ajapahyan told the courtroom, “Do not forgive them Father, for they know what they do.”
From prison, he has continued to defend the Church against Pashinyan’s campaign, and to admonish disloyal clergy, through sharply written letters in immaculate script.
