The FBI has joined the San Francisco police investigation into an arson fire that engulfed an Armenian cultural center in September, one of a spate of apparent hate crimes targeting San Francisco’s Armenian community, officials announced Thursday.
Federal investigators offered a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the fire that ripped through the building adjacent to the St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church in Presidio Heights on Sept. 17. The arson leveled Sunday school classrooms, a library, meeting rooms and church offices as flames tore through the building before dawn.
“This act of violence was not just an attack on a building, but on a congregation,” FBI investigator Craig Fair said in a statement announcing federal involvement in the probe.
The San Francisco Police Department’s arson task force deemed the fire a hate crime, one of several attacks on the city’s Armenian community over two months. The other hate crimes were tied to the KZV Armenian School in the Parkmerced neighborhood, where police investigated hateful graffiti and bullet damage.
Police have not arrested any suspects, and FBI officials said they do not yet know whether the incidents are connected.
In addition to the FBI reward, the Armenian Cultural Foundation is offering $25,000 to anyone with information that leads to an arrest and conviction. The foundation represents thousands of Armenian people in the Bay Area, many of whom said the San Francisco fire was emblematic of a larger intimidation effort.
“It is a tragic situation that we still find ourselves faced with such a threatening and violent level of hate,” said Edith Khachatourian, a parishoner at St. Gregory, where the fire destroyed the interiors of the first floor and basement of the adjacent building. No one was inside.
The attacks appeared to be part of a larger pattern of hate crimes around the world against members of the Armenian diaspora in the lead-up to the six-week war in the Caucasus region known as Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh.
St. Gregory’s has long served as a refuge for the descendants of those who fled persecution after the Armenian genocide more than 100 years ago, Khachatourian said.