Armenia jails prominent archbishop for two years for calls to usurp power

A court in Armenia sentenced a well-known archbishop to two years in prison on Friday after finding him guilty of calling for regime change in what his church has condemned as a politically motivated trial, Armenian site CivilNet reported.

The acrimonious confrontation, pitting the Armenian Apostolic Church against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government, saw a number of prominent clerics arrested this summer on charges of attempts to incite violent coups.

Alongside Archbishop Mikael Ajapahyan, who was sentenced on Friday, another noted cleric, Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, who led street protests against Pashinyan last year, is also in pre-trial detention facing criminal charges.

Ajapahyan was arrested in June over an interview he gave the previous year in which he said there was a need for a coup in Armenia.

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At the time, the prosecutor's office said the statement did not warrant criminal punishment. But after he made similar remarks this year, the 62-year-old cleric was arrested.

In a statement after the verdict last week, the Apostolic Church said the Ajapahyan's conviction was an act of "political vengeance."

The standoff with the church comes as Pashinyan faces parliamentary elections next year and is under domestic pressure to conclude a peace agreement with Azerbaijan to end decades of conflict between the South Caucasus neighbours.

A text of a U.S.-brokered peace agreement was signed in Washington in August, but major hurdles remain to the formal signing of the deal, including a demand by Azerbaijan that Armenia change its constitution.