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Diplomat's assassin denied parole

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  • Diplomat's assassin denied parole

    Pasadena Star-News, CA
    Sept 1 2006


    Diplomat's assassin denied parole


    LOS ANGELES - Parole was denied Thursday for an Armenian immigrant
    serving a 25-year-to-life term for the 1982 murder of a Turkish
    diplomat, who was shot 14 times in the head and chest as he sat in
    his car near Westwood.

    Hampig "Harry" M. Sassounian, who admitted his role in the Jan. 28,
    1982, assassination of Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan more than
    20 years after the crime, will have to wait until 2010 for a second
    chance at release, said Sandi Gibbons of the Los Angeles County
    District Attorney's office.

    Sassounian's attorney, Mark Geragos, did not immediately return a
    call seeking comment.

    Sassounian was originally sentenced in 1984 to life behind bars
    without the possibility of parole for the ambush slaying.

    In 2000, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel overturned the
    Pasadena man's life-without-parole sentence.

    The three-justice panel, citing juror misconduct, reversed the
    special circumstance finding that Arikan was killed because of his
    national origin but upheld his murder conviction.

    Prosecutors were poised to retry the special circumstance allegation
    but agreed not to do so after Sassounian read a statement in court
    admitting his guilt and renouncing terrorism.

    A judge subsequently sentenced Sassounian to the 25-year-to-life
    term, with the possibility of parole.

    "I participated in the murder of Kemal Arikan," Sassounian said
    during the 2002 Los Angeles Superior Court hearing. "I have been
    legally convicted of that crime. I renounce the use of terrorist
    tactics such as the assassination of diplomats to achieve political
    goals."

    Arikan, 54, was shot at close range in the head and chest by two
    armed men when he stopped his car on Wilshire Boulevard on his way to
    the Turkish consulate in Beverly Hills.

    During the trial, a jailhouse informant testified that Sassounian,
    then a 19-year-old security guard, told him he killed Arikan to "get
    revenge on what the Turkish people did to his people."

    Ottoman Turks killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-18
    in their historic homeland in eastern Turkey.
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