Since June 25, 2025, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan has been in detention.
In order to intensify its campaign against the Armenian Church and the Catholicos of All Armenians, the Armenian authorities decided to “neutralize” the individual who had achieved the broadest public consolidation in Armenia — a bishop of the Armenian Church.
ON 25.06.2025, ARCHBISHOP BAGRAT AND 17 OTHER INNOCENT INDIVIDUALS WERE CHARGED WITH ALLEGEDLY PLANNING TERRORISM AND THE USURPATION OF POWER.
It later emerged that the Archbishop’s residence had been unlawfully wiretapped for nearly a year.
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After failing to uncover any substantive evidence during that period, the National Security Service and the Investigative Committee edited together fragments of conversations about peaceful protest planning and everyday matters, took them out of context, and made them public.
The authorities directed their full resources toward disseminating these falsified recordings, in which the Archbishop is purportedly heard discussing preparations to shoot civilians.
Among those arrested alongside Archbishop Bagrat were not only his assistants and press secretary, but also the father of a fallen hero, members of the National Assembly of Armenia and of Artsakh, businesspeople, blogger, and others — in what appeared to be an attempt to intimidate opposition-minded individuals active in various fields.
11.08.2025 – THE ARCHBISHOP’S DEFENSE PUBLISHES EVIDENCE OF FALSIFIED RECORDINGS
The complete audio recordings released by the defense demonstrate that the Archbishop did not plan to take anyone’s life, and that the version circulated by the authorities was edited and taken out of context.
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19.08.2025 – THE TRIAL BEGINS
Two months after the “information terrorism” campaign was successfully carried out, the Investigative Committee referred the case to court. After six months of proceedings, the time for propaganda has ended; now it is time for the prosecutors to present openly and transparently the specific evidence they claim substantiates such grave charges. The prosecutors have avoided doing so.
After six months of what amounted in practice to punitive detention, the preventive measures imposed on the majority of the 18 righteous individuals were replaced with alternative measures. Only Archbishop Bagrat remains in custody.
But as the Archbishop himself states:
“No one has deprived me of my freedom, nor can anyone do so, because neither my life nor my freedom is under your authority.
Therefore, let those who consider themselves free reflect on whose hands they are imprisoned in, and by what they are imprisoned — by money, by position, by the desire to maintain a home, by fears, by phone calls”
