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.