Yerevan – The group Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jewish community center in the capital Yerevan, AzerNews reported on Thursday.
The Mordechai Navi Synagogue at 23 Nar-Dos Street in Yerevan is the only Jewish place of worship in Armenia, headed by the Chief Rabbi of Armenia Gershon Burstein. It was established in June 2011, with financial assistance from Armenian businessman and renowned photographer David Galstyan.
In its statement following the attack, ASALA claimed that its “youth wing” had set the synagogue on fire, adding that they are not going to stop and that the next attack on the Jewish community would be carried out outside Armenia.
The nearest country to Armenia with a thriving Jewish community is Azerbaijan, which shares a border and a long history of violence and war with Armenia.
The ASALA was active in the 1970s through the 1990s, and its stated goal was “to compel the Turkish Government to acknowledge publicly its responsibility for the Armenian genocide in 1915, pay reparations, and cede territory for an Armenian homeland.” It was allied for a while with the PLO. At some point, its leaders were taken out by what appeared to be Turkish government secret agents. ASALA’s founder Hagop Hagopian was assassinated on a sidewalk in an affluent neighborhood in Athens, Greece on April 28, 1988. Assassinations of former members of ASALA continued into the late 1990s.
