Judge who arrested Archbishops Mikael Ajapakhian and Bagrat  Galstanian also arrested Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan  - lawyer 

ArmInfo.  Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan, head of the chancery of the Mother See of Etchmiadzin, has been arrested. Judge Masis Melkonyan, who previously arrested  Archbishops Mikael Ajapakhian and Bagrat Galstanian, granted the  investigator's motion to remand Khachatryan in custody for two  months.

"Was there a single person who wasn't certain yesterday that a  two-month remand would be imposed?  Everyone knew about it; they  simply came to participate in this formal process," Archbishop Arsen  Babayan, the archbishop's lawyer, told reporters after the court's  decision was announced.

Thus, in Armenia, the first country in the world to adopt  Christianity as a state religion, the fourth high- ranking hierarch  has been taken into custody. Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, Archbishop  Mikael Ajapakhyan, Primate of the Shirak Diocese of the Armenian  Apostolic Church, and Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, Primate of the  Aragatsotn Diocese, are currently in pretrial detention.

As a reminder, Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan was detained by National  Security Service officers yesterday evening at the entrance to the  Investigative Committee building. The hierarch was summoned for  questioning in connection with the well-known video recording case  and, after the interrogation, was detained, claiming that an  investigator had issued a warrant for his detention. At the time, the  National Security Service did not specify the charges against him. It  was later revealed that the archbishop is accused of planting drugs  in the bag of a protester against His Holiness in 2018, allegedly for  the purpose of discrediting him. As the Investigative Committee of  Armenia later reported, a criminal case has been opened under Article  393, Part 2, Paragraphs 1 and 4 of the Russian Criminal Code (illegal  sale of narcotics committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy  in a public place).

As lawyer Arsen Babayan told reporters today, there is no direct  evidence against Archbishop Arshak. "It was suggested that he may  have planted the drugs in the activist's backpack. The last action in  the case, which has been under investigation since 2018, took place  in July 2025. On December 4, 2025, an investigative team was created  and the archbishop was detained. "They've been investigating for  seven years, but they still haven't figured out how the drugs ended  up in the backpack. This case has nothing to do with jurisprudence,"  he said.