The Public Center for Political Rights issued a statement regarding the latest attack on the Church, stating:
“On February 14, the Prosecutor’s Office brought charges against the Catholicos and imposed a travel ban on him. The charges are based on the same grounds as those brought against the six bishops on January 31. In essence, the leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church is being prosecuted for the removal of Gevorg (Arman) Saroyan, thereby ‘obstructing’ his tenure as diocesan primate.
In the CSIRC’s previous urgent report, we detailed a number of precedent-setting decisions of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the autonomy of religious organizations and the state’s duty not to interfere with them. It is impossible for the Prosecutor General, with over twenty years of legal education and experience, to be unaware of the aforementioned criteria.
The relationship between the head of the Prosecutor’s Office and the ruling political party, as well as the sequence of events, clearly indicate that the indictment of the Catholicos was directly sanctioned by N. Pashinyan in the context of the “very harsh retaliatory measures” he spoke of.
Given these circumstances, it is clear that the indictment of the Catholicos and six bishops, and the restriction of their right to travel, is a blatant attempt to prohibit their participation in the Assembly of Bishops of the Council of Europe. This prohibition is the result of a gross violation of the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), specifically the state’s failure to comply with its obligation not to interfere with the autonomy of a religious organization, thereby violating both the rights of religion (CEH) and the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association. “In the sense of the ECHR, such actions are expressly prohibited by Article 18.”