The case begins with a diocese. On 10 January Garegin II relieved Bishop Gevorg Saroyan of the Masyatsotn diocese, citing abuse of office and pressure on the clergy. Saroyan sued to be reinstated, and the Armavir court of first instance secured his claim with an interim measure obliging the church not to obstruct him in his duties; Hetq dates that ruling to 16 January and its delivery to the 19th. On 28 January the Supreme Spiritual Council met at Etchmiadzin, and the Catholicos, by patriarchal order, declared Saroyan defrocked. The prosecution treats that order, and the council session behind it, as the obstruction.
Prosecutors opened the case in mid-February and barred the Catholicos from leaving the country days before an assembly of bishops in Austria. The file reached court on 29 July. Seven men are charged under the same article: Garegin II, archbishops Nathan Hovhannisyan and Haykazun Najaryan, and bishops Vahan Hovhannisyan, Makar Hakobyan, Mushegh Babayan and Hovnan Hakobyan. Armenian outlets give several of them by their secular names, so Makar Hakobyan appears as Edgar, Mushegh Babayan as Nelson and Hovnan Hakobyan as Artur.
It is impossible to single out the charge brought against the Catholicos alone
Holy Etchmiadzin calls the prosecution groundless and political, and the charge against the Catholicos and the six bishops "an illegal interference in the internal life of the Church". Ara Zohrabyan, who defends Garegin II, frames the trial as the question of whether secular power may enter the internal life of the church. That was the council’s position in January too: church questions lie outside a court’s jurisdiction. The state’s answer is the indictment, which treats a decree of the head of the church as an act of office.
The venue then took a month. The first hearing opened in Vagharshapat on 7 August and ran about half an hour before judge Hakob Manukyan withdrew from it. A second Armavir judge, Serzh Rushanyan, sent the file to Yerevan on the ground that the charge against the Catholicos names no place of commission. In Yerevan judge Vahagn Melikyan passed the question of jurisdiction to the Court of Cassation. Monday’s answer turns on the other six: the acts they are accused of were committed at Etchmiadzin during a session of the Supreme Spiritual Council, and Etchmiadzin lies in Armavir province. It is impossible to single out the charge brought against the Catholicos alone, the court held.
Several things remain open. The reports do not give the penalty part 2 of article 507 carries, and the special part of the 2021 criminal code is not served by the state legal portals. No date has been set for the first hearing in Armavir. Saroyan’s civil claim, the case that produced the order at the centre of the prosecution, is still running.
One other Armenian court file moves alongside this one. Gagik Khachatryan, who ran the State Revenue Committee and then the finance ministry, was remanded for two months on 2 September. The charges include embezzlement, abuse of office and laundering, over fictitious contracts dated 2008 to 2010 worth about 2.18 billion drams. His lawyers have applied to Strasbourg.