Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan's lawyer, Arsen Babayan, stated that the criminal proceedings against his client have no legal merit. He made the remarks to reporters outside the Avan court building in Yerevan, where the pre-trial detention hearing is underway.

“There is no direct testimony against Archbishop Arshak. Some people have made assumptions or expressed suspicions. The case has been under investigation since 2018. The last investigative action was carried out in July of this year, involving an interrogation. A new investigative team was formed just yesterday, and Archbishop Arshak was arrested. They’ve been investigating this case for seven years and still can’t figure out how the narcotics ended up in the backpack. This has nothing to do with law,” Babayan said, as reported by Panorama.am .

According to the lawyer, Archbishop Arshak had anticipated such developments since the initial press conference.

Earlier, Babayan stated during a Facebook broadcast: “The claim is that back in 2018, during one of the protests against the Catholicos, the Archbishop supposedly instructed someone to plant drugs in a participant’s bag to discredit them. The absurdity begins right there. The article they hastily applied, concerning illegal drug trafficking, has no connection to these alleged facts. Even the investigative body now rejects that charge, as the supposed intent wasn’t distribution, but to discredit someone by planting the drugs.”

At 9:30 a.m., under the chairmanship of Judge Masis Melkonyan, the court began reviewing the motion to apply a two-month pre-trial detention for Archbishop Arshak.

Archbishop Arshak was arrested on December 4. The Investigative Committee stated: “During the preliminary investigation, public criminal prosecution was initiated under Article 393, Part 2, Points 1 and 4 of the Criminal Code (illegal distribution of drugs by a group in a public place). He was arrested for court presentation.”