Citizenship of Armenians upheld

09/07/2005
DailyNews.com
By Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a judge did not err in granting U.S. citizenship to two Armenian men convicted more than 20 years ago of planning to bomb the Turkish Consulate in Philadelphia.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ends a long struggle by Viken Hovsepian and Viken Yacoubian, who plotted to bomb the consulate in retaliation for the killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915. The Turkish government denies a massacre occurred.
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The men were in their early 20s when they and two others were arrested in 1982 after authorities tape-recorded them planning the bombing. Authorities at the time said they were linked to the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide.
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Federal law currently forbids convicted terrorists from becoming citizens. But anyone convicted of an aggravated felony before November 1990 can be granted citizenship if they have been "of good moral character" for five years prior to their application [...].
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The men, who have been out of prison since the early 1990s, now have doctorates, have renounced violence and volunteer many hours a week in the Los Angeles Armenian- American community [...].
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Yacoubian is now principal of the Rose and Alex Pilibos Armenian School in Los Angeles' Little Armenia and has obtained a doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Southern California [...].
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.