YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — An Armenian court on April 13 struck down a travel ban imposed on Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II earlier this year amid Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s attempts to depose the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
A law-enforcement agency banned Karekin as well as six bishops from leaving Armenia when it indicted them two months ago. The accusations leveled against them stem from Karekin’s January 27 decision to defrock another bishop, who is involved in Pashinyan’s controversial campaign.
They were thus unable to attend an emergency episcopal conference held by the Armenian Church in Austria later in February. Karekin was also not allowed to attend last month’s funeral of neighboring Georgia’s longtime Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II.
Karekin’s office and legal experts questioned the legality of the accusations, saying that Armenian law-enforcement authorities have no jurisdiction over internal church affairs. Lawyers representing the Catholicos challenged the travel ban in court.
A court of first instance declared the ban null and void late last week. The Office of the Prosecutor-General told the Sputnik news agency on April 13 that it will appeal against the court order.
Pashinyan began pressuring Karekin to resign last June shortly after the Catholicos accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas during an international conference in Switzerland. Three Armenian archbishops and one bishop were arrested in the following months on different charges strongly denied by them. Three of them were moved to house arrest earlier this year.
