Lawyer criticizes Armenian investigators over videos linked to archbishop

Archbishop Arshak Khachatryan’s lawyer has sharply criticized the Armenian Investigative Committee for dismissing foreign forensic reports that clear his client of involvement in intimate videos circulated online.

At a press conference on Friday, attorney Arsen Babayan revealed that independent expert analyses commissioned by the defense in three different countries concluded that Khachatryan is not the person depicted in the footage. Additional reports are still pending.

“We already have results from three international forensic examinations, and they are enough for us to speak with confidence,” Babayan said. The reports, ordered in November and received earlier this month, support the archbishop’s denial of any connection to the videos.

Babayan described the Investigative Committee’s reaction as “strange and very surprising” after the agency claimed the foreign findings carried no evidentiary value in the criminal proceedings. He argued that Armenian law allows lawyers to commission expert examinations, making the committee’s dismissal difficult to justify.

He stressed that the defense did not intend to submit the reports as formal evidence but rather to reinforce Khachatryan’s public denial and counter a misleading narrative around the investigation. Babayan also disputed the committee’s claim that its own examination identified Khachatryan as the individual in the videos.

Although the archbishop officially holds the status of a witness in the case, Babayan insisted he is effectively in the position of a victim. “It was proposed that Archbishop Arshak be recognized as a victim in the probe into violation of personal and family privacy. But from the very beginning, he has stated that he has no connection to the video or the circumstances around it. Therefore, he cannot be considered a victim of a privacy breach,” Babayan explained.

Instead, he argued investigators should focus on a deliberate attempt to defame Khachatryan and incite hostility toward him and the church, as well as identifying those responsible for fabricating and distributing the false material.

The archbishop remains in detention on separate charges of allegedly planting drugs in the backpack of a demonstrator during a 2018 protest against Catholicos Karekin II.