Armenian Given 12 Years for Bombings

A former member of an Armenian terrorist organization was sentenced Monday to 12 years in prison for his role in a series of bombings and attempted bombings in Los Angeles that included attacks on the Swiss Consulate and an Air Canada warehouse.

Vicken Tcharkhutian, 34, a former Fluor Corp. design engineer who admitted constructing many of the bombs, called himself “a true believer in the Armenian cause,” but his lawyer said he has become “a different person” since the attacks in 1981 and 1982.

“I guess I ought to have believed less and thought more,” Tcharkhutian told U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon.

Fugitive for Five Years

Tcharkhutian was a fugitive for more than five years before his arrest in September at Los Angeles International Airport. Federal officials said he is the last known U.S. member of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, which waged a worldwide terror campaign over the past decade.

He pleaded guilty last month to building many of the weapons used in the bombings of Swiss Bank Corp. and a Hollywood flooring store and the attempted bombing of the Swiss Consulate and an Air Canada warehouse at LAX. No one was injured in the explosions at the bank and flooring store. Police defused the bombs at the warehouse and consulate before they could explode.

Most of the attacks were carried out in an attempt to obtain the freedom of jailed Armenian terrorists in Canada and Switzerland, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Terree Bowers. The owner of the Hollywood Carpeteria flooring store hit with two bombs, an Armenian, claimed he had been the subject of extortion demands to support the Armenian Secret Army’s cause.

The organization is seeking an independent Armenian homeland in eastern Turkey and Turkish acknowledgement of guilt for the 1915 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians.

But unlike the Justice Commandos of Armenian Genocide, believed responsible for the 1981 assassination of the Turkish counsel general in Los Angeles, most of the secret army’s targets have been non-Turkish, Bowers said.

“As an Armenian, I have sought to fulfill my obligations to this cause through means that are not acceptable to the laws of this society,” Tcharkhutian said.

“Neither the U.S. nor the Swiss are the enemies of the Armenian people,” he said, but he added, “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”

Bowers sought a stiff sentence--Tcharkhutian could have been sentenced to 35 years--for the Los Angeles attacks. He said the United States must “send a message” to terrorists who seek to advance a political cause through violence.

“Two of the targets here were foreign governments,” Bowers said. “I think if the U.S. expects other countries to protect our citizens when they’re in foreign lands, then we have to do the same thing.”