According to NSW police, members of the Australian community with direct information of this cell still choose not to come forward.
Read the cross-Pacific connections of ARF terrorists. How the Canadian killing is linked to Australia? Did LA Five helped Australian cell's plot to carry a mass casualty terrorist attack with submachine guns being shipped from Los Angeles?
Recently released FBI papers on Armenian terrorist attacks in the US and Canada, ASIO's cabinet briefing papers, and various case files raise serious reasonable doubts about organic links between JCAG cells across the Pacific. Same documents suggest, despite mounting evidence of a conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack on Australian soil, police had failed to make any arrests.
BACKGROUND:
Members of the Justice Commandoes of Armenian Genocide (JCAG) have been recruited from the ranks of Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) youth groups. ARF is also known as Dashnags, with their very foundation dating back to late 1800s. Their rival political group is called Hunchaks.
According to agent interviews with some members of the Armenian community in Australia, Dashnag head office had formed the JCAG in 1975 in Beirut in response to the success of another terrorist organisation, backed by Hunchaks; ASALA. (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) Dashnag backed JCAG carried out dozens of terror attacks, including two in Australia, to attract patriotic Armenian diaspora youth to their ranks.
Australia paid attention to Turkish diplomats' warnings on the morning of 17 December 1980, when two gunmen shot and killed Sarik Ariyak, before the very eyes of his then eight-year-old daughter, and Engin Sever.
Immediate extensive investigations had helped them discover a secret network of up to a dozen or more Armenian-Australians with links to Dashnag party as suspects. One key suspect was Levon Demirian, a young ARF Youth Office executive, with "seemingly extensive autonomy" in spite of other higher ranking ARF leaders in the country. He was known to ASIO with several names, including aka Lou Robert Jackson.
He was to be sentenced for the 1986 bombing of Turkish consulate general in Melbourne, later in 1988.
Demirian's brothers also came under close scrutiny and surveillance efforts. When police raided their family premises following consulate general bombing in 1986, they had found more than one hundred pieces of gelignite, an explosive, that was used in Melbourne attack.
These explosive however was belonging to Levon's brother, who then run a business through which he had been in legal possession of these items.
ASIO again followed Demirian brothers in 1985 with suspicion over them plotting "something" during the proposed visit of the Turkish Foreign Minister to Canberra.
THE CANADIAN CONNECTION:
On 27 August 1982, Turkish military attaché Colonel Atilla Altikat was killed by JCAG terrorists in Ottawa, Canada. A photofit of the suspect had been circulated within law enforcement agencies through Interpol, following a lead on the purchaser of an Australian airline. The Victorian police, according internal FBI documents dated 5 June 1983, had noted striking resemblance between the photofit and passport photographs of a Victorian Dashnag party identity.
This person had departed Australia on 7 July 1982, for Los Angeles on Continental Airlines, and returned to Melbourne on 30 August 1982 via Philippine Airlines. He had travelled to Canada and the United States in 1978, with no record of his return. Another travel record exist for this person of interest to Fiji on 2 March 1982. The person of interest had been identified as "having a fiery nature and a passion for guns and hunting". He "is also said to be a fanatical member of the Dashnag Party who is in possession of an unlicensed revolver for his personal protection." Victoria police told their Canadian partners through Interpol, that he "was the quieter of the three brothers."
THE AMERICAN CONNECTION:
According to FBI files, the terrorist who killed Altikat in Ottawa, returned to Los Angeles same evening. A party was organised to celebrate the success of this terror attack at Adiss Golden Village restaurant on 6547 Hollywood Boulevard.
Some of those who attended this party, was later to be arrested and convicted for plotting to bomb Turkish consulate general building in Philadelphia.
Among those who were to be convicted with Philadelphia bombing indictment was Karnig Karlos Sarkissian, a so-called patriotic singer who recently arrested and pled guilty for drug transportation charges in the US. Sarkissian had migrated to the US from Australia late in 1978. Sarkissian, according to an FBI inmate informant, while awaiting trial, had admitted that he had been Sydney "when something happened to Turkish consul general there."
KRIKOR KEVERIAN'S TRIP TO THE US:
According to ASIO's secret cabinet briefing dated 8 September 1983, a suspected JCAG member who believed to have played a role in the killing of Ariyak and Sever, Silva Donelian told Krikor Keverian, a member of the ARF Youth Federation, to "remember to bring back some important things with" him.
Keverian seemed to have done the job.
On 12 July 1983, custom officials seized four undeclared pistols, spare magazines, speed loaders, and other equipment in Keverian's luggage.
Levon Demirian was meant to be returning to Australia on 15 July 1983, because something "had been brought forward." Following Keverian's arrest, Demirian, who had left Australia in February 1981 for "holiday" in Beirut, cancelled his return.
On 14 July 1983, Agop Magarditch, another Armenian who had returned from the US where he had been living since 1979, told authorities that firearms had been in a shipment for him from Los Angeles.
Police seized a the shipment on 26 July 1983, and found a large cache of arms, including UZI sub-machine-guns, ammunition, and terror attack manuals.
Evidence much less than this were enough to convict alleged terrorists in Australia in mid 2000s. No serious charge had been laid as a result of these seizures, evidence, and wire tapings.
MORE TO FOLLOW
"ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST" CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE ARF-AUSTRALIA WOMEN CELEBRATE THE OTTAWA KILLING
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