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On August 7, 1982, two Armenian terrorists, Zohrab Sarkissian and Levon Ekmekjian, launched a suicide attack on international airport Esenboğa of Ankara city. They opened fire in a crowded passenger waiting room of the Ankara Esenboğa Airport. One of the terrorists took more than twenty hostages while the second was apprehended by the Turkish police. Terrorists resisted for three hours with explosives and automatic weapons (Polish-made WZ-63 9mm submachine gun). Nine people were dead and eighty-two injured seriously. The dead included an American and a West German passenger. Armenian terrorist Zohrab Sarkissian was killed in the clashes. The surviving terrorist, Levon Ekmekjian, a French national of Lebanese extraction, was arrested and sentenced. Ekmekjian, when told that nine people had died and eighty two others had been wounded in the attack, said “it wasn’t enough”. However he admitted that he had an accomplice in the killing and that it had been planned for some time. When he was on the stand, he said "I came here motivated by belief, however, after this incident understand how ridiculous and wrong that belief was...." Ekmekjian was sentenced to death and hanged in January 1983.
It was claimed that there were two ASALA assault teams and that the first unit struck the headquarters of the Turkish military police near the airport and then took over the passenger terminal. The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) claimed responsibility for the attack and stated that the attack was against the "Turkish fascist occupation of our land," and warned of suicide attacks in the United States, Canada, England, Sweden, and Switzerland unless 85 prisoners held in those countries were not released within seven days. A caller to the press stated that the operation was staged by "Martyr Kharmian Hayrik Suicide Squad."
Most of the diaspora Armenian organizations declared both terrorists national heroes. In 2004, Yerevan Yeraplour Cemetery in Armenia was dedicated to Zohrab Sarkissian and Levon Ekmekjian by the Patriotic Nemesis group. 7 August is decreed a memorial day in Armenia and a ceremony of remembrance was held at the cemetery of Yeraplour of Yerevan in honour of members of the Secret Army of Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). Yerevan Governments and Armenian media considered both terrorists as martyrs.
(s.l.)
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