Armenia’s Investigative Committee said a court-ordered forensic examination confirmed that Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan is depicted in the video at the center of the criminal case, while externally obtained conclusions cannot be treated as evidence.

Within the criminal proceedings launched at Armenia’s Investigative Committee over a possible violation of the privacy of Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan’s personal life, a forensic video and portrait examination was commissioned and has already been received. It confirmed that the individual shown in the videos is indeed him, Armenpress reports, citing the Investigative Committee.

Addressing a lawyer’s statement about three different expert opinions circulating publicly, the Investigative Committee noted that those conclusions cannot be regarded as evidence, since they were obtained outside the framework of the criminal proceedings and were not commissioned by the body conducting the investigation in accordance with criminal procedure legislation.

“Moreover, such conclusions obtained arbitrarily cannot have any evidentiary value, as an expert opinion in criminal proceedings acquires legal significance exclusively when it is based on a comprehensive examination of the case materials and conducted with due observance of relevant procedural guarantees. Therefore, any assessment obtained outside the proceedings, without a proper procedural basis and without a full review of the materials, cannot be considered either evidence or a lawful expert opinion and cannot serve as grounds for any legal conclusion,” the statement reads.

Earlier, Arshak Archbishop Khachatryan’s defense lawyer, Arsen Babayan, stated that he had received the results of examinations commissioned on his own initiative from three different countries, which, according to him, confirmed Khachatryan’s claims that he had no connection to the content of the video attributed to him.