Speaking to journalists, Simonian did not specify the accusations they want to bring against the lawmaker, Artur Sargsian.
Sargsian’s home in Yerevan was one of several dozen locations which police and National Security Service (NSS) officers searched on June 25 in a criminal investigation into what they call a coup plot hatched by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian. Galstanian as well as 14 of his supporters were arrested and charged with planning to seize power through “terrorist acts.”
Sargsian was not detained or questioned during the operation. A member of the opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), he was actively involved in last year’s massive antigovernment demonstrations led by Galstanian. Like other opposition groups, Dashnaktsutyun has dismissed the coup accusations as politically motivated and linked them to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s ongoing campaign against the top clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Right after the arrests, the Investigative Committee claimed that Galstanian began preparations for a violent overthrow of Armenia’s government last November together members of his opposition-backed movement. In a statement, it said they planned to assassinate unnamed “civilians,” take other violent actions and paralyze the country’s security apparatus for that purpose.
Armenia - Artur Poghosian, the head of the Investigative Committee, speaks in parliament, May 12, 2025.
The head of the law-enforcement, Artur Poghosian, said late on Monday that Galstanian and his associates considered carrying out those actions in April, May or mid-June. Poghosian did not say why they avoided doing that.
Nor did Poghosian comment on a “coup plan” which the Investigative Committee claimed to have confiscated during the raids. The purported document publicized on June 25 says that Galstanian’s team will try to seize power in July-August 2024, rather than this summer. Opposition figures seized upon this fact, saying that it alone makes mockery of the coup allegations.
Poghosian also implicated another archbishop, Mikael Ajapahian, and Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian in the alleged conspiracy. The two men were arrested on June 27 and June 18 respectively on separate charges of calling for a violent regime change. The charges strongly denied by them are not part of the criminal case against Galstanian and the 14 other detainees. Lawyers representing Ajapahian and Karapetian pointed this out in their reactions to Poghosian’s claims.
“I find it difficult to imagine why the chairman of the Investigative Committee made such a statement,” Aram Vartevanian, one of Karapetian’s lawyers, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Karapetian was prosecuted hours after condemning Pashinian’s efforts to depose Catholicos Garegin II and other senior clergymen of the Armenian Apostolic Church.