(10-01) 00:50 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) —
A federal appeals court ruled that an Armenian community leader convicted of a 1982 bomb plot to blow up the office of a Turkish diplomat may be deported after a federal judge already granted him U.S. citizenship.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Viken Yacoubian could face new immigration proceedings that could lead to his deportation. The decision reverses the ruling of a federal judge who granted citizenship to Yacoubian after the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused his application.
The appeals court said the judge abused her discretion and should have left the decision up to INS officials.
Yacoubian, the 39-year-old principal of a private school in Los Angeles, and four others were arrested in November 1982 after FBI agents seized dynamite in the baggage claim area at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The explosives had been flown from Los Angeles as part of a plan to bomb the Philadelphia office of the honorary Turkish consul general.
Armenians were pressuring the Turkish government to accept responsibility for the deaths of more than 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Turk government during World War I and afterward. Turkey rejected any responsibility and refused to pay reparations.
Yacoubian served two years in prison. After serving the sentence, the conviction was set aside under terms of a federal youth corrections act.
“Whether the actions of their youth justify deportation under our immigration laws is a question for the political branches of government. Judicial sympathy only functions within prescribed parameters of the law,” wrote appellate Justice Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain.
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