Author: Harut Sassounian

Absurd Propagandist for Azerbaijan Blames California Armenians

Not a week passes without another propagandist for Azerbaijan writing anti-Armenian disinformation against either Armenia or the Diaspora.

The latest such article was written by Andrew Korybko, an unknown individual described as an “American Moscow-based political analyst.” We don’t know what education or background qualifies him as an “analyst” on the Armenian Diaspora to make false accusations on the basis of the little he seems to know. One gets the impression that Korybko’s article is not simply the result of his ignorance, but a deliberate effort arranged by entities that are not difficult to guess!

Korybko’s article, published by the Center for Research on Globalization, Canada, is titled: “The US-Based Armenian Lobby is on a Mission to Provoke Azerbaijan and Russia.” Even from the title, it is obvious that the author is trying to incite a conflict between Russia and Armenians, whereas in reality, there is no such conflict. A note at the end of the article indicates that the article was “originally written for the ‘Moscow-Baku.ru’ online information portal,” which provides a clear evidence of who the author is trying to please!

In his first paragraph, Korybko attacks the Armenians of California for their extreme nationalism and working for the United States against the interests of Armenia. Of course, none of these statements is true! The author’s aim is to start a baseless controversy. Here is the first paragraph of Korybko’s faulty commentary:

“One of the most influential weapons that Armenia has in its foreign policy toolkit is its US-based diaspora lobby in California, which supports their homeland’s most nationalistic and firebrand policies. Instead of behaving as a responsible and pragmatic instrument of the Armenian government in what could have been a calculated policy to balance between Great Powers, it’s oftentimes the case that the roles are reversed and Yerevan is used as an instrument and tool of the US-based Armenian lobby in working against the country’s national interests in order to promote the US. All states aspire for their people to build robust and influential diaspora communities abroad, but the Armenian one is heavily politicized and regularly exerts negative influence on Yerevan in order to bring it under further American control.”

First of all, California Armenians neither try nor have the power to influence the policies of the Republic of Armenia. Secondly, anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Armenian-Americans knows that they are often quite critical of United States relations with Turkey, position on Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh), and Turkey’s undue influence on U.S. government leaders who refuse to use the term ‘Armenian Genocide.’ Therefore it is completely untrue that California Armenians blindly serve the interests of the United States.

Korybko then blames “the US-based diaspora” for taking a congressional delegation in mid-September, not only to Armenia, but “whisked off on a highly publicized visit to the occupied regions of Western Azerbaijan.” By describing the Republic of Artsakh as “the occupied regions of Western Azerbaijan,” Korybko makes amply clear whose interests he is serving! Strangely, the author goes on to describe the congressional visit, not only as a pro-American move, but “to Russia’s overall strategic detriment.” Thus, Korybko is accusing Armenian-Americans of undermining Russian interests in Armenia which is totally untrue because they have neither the wish nor the ability to undermine Russia! The author is simply showing who his second master is, in addition to Azerbaijan!

Korybko then resorts to an extreme exaggeration by fabricating the following untrue scenario about Armenian-Americans: “In fact, they want to do everything that they can to ruin the historic Russian-Armenian friendship in their feverish attempt to tear Yerevan away from Moscow and bring it under Washington’s proxy tutelage.”

To back up his fake claim, the author mentions that complaints by citizens of Armenia last month about a government official’s announcement to provide more support to Russian language programs “closely aligns with the position pushed forth by some elements of the US-based diaspora and their American-linked associates in Armenia.” The fact is that not a single person in the entire diaspora said one critical word about the Russian language. Korybko then resorts to another unwarranted exaggeration by claiming that the Armenian Education Ministry “felt pressured to cave in to their diaspora’s demands and reaffirm that Armenian is the only national language in the country…. Whether he intended or not, [Education Minister Levon] Mkrtchyan fell into the information warfare trap laid out for him by the cunning minds organizing the US-based diaspora’s political activities.” This is yet another pure invention by the author!

Exceeding all logical bounds, Korybko alleges that “the Armenian lobby in the US is very similar to the Gulenists in Turkey, in that they represent a shadowy power network with a concrete geopolitical agenda advanced through manipulative means, and both serve the interests of Washington against their homelands.” Korybko with a completely erroneous conclusion claims that “the US-based Armenian lobby is getting dangerously close to seizing full control over their homeland’s foreign policy.”

There are other falsifications in Korybko’s article too numerous to mention. Whoever commissioned this article must realize that such authors, by their ridiculous falsehoods, are causing more damage to the interests of their paymasters than the Armenian community in California!

October 11, 2017
How Turkey Destroyed or Disposed Its Historical Archives and Documents

For several decades, the Turkish government and its propagandists have been announcing that the state documents, particularly the Ottoman archives, are fully open and available to any researcher from around the world.

What Turkish officials and their supporters do not say is that many documents of the Ottoman archives have been removed, destroyed, sold or disposed of. In addition, some of the most sensitive archives are still closed to outsiders.

Last month, Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut posted a revealing article, “Turkey Uncensored: A History of Censorship and Bans” on the PhilosProject.org website regarding the status of Turkish archives and documents going back to several centuries. Ms. Bulut is free to expose such secrets because she no longer lives in Turkey. She is currently based in Washington, D.C.

In Turkey today, Wikipedia’s website is blocked by governmental order because Wikipedia refused to delete articles revealing that the Turkish authorities are supporting the Islamic State terrorists. Furthermore, 127,000 websites and 95,000 individual Web pages are blocked by Turkey, according to journalist Bulut.

This modern-day banning of thousands of websites is the continuation of Ottoman Sultan Bayazid II’s decree of 1485 A.D. imposing the death penalty on anyone printing books in Turkish or Arabic. The ban remained for more than two centuries, Bulut reported. “That prohibition is widely cited by historians as one of the major reasons for the intellectual and scientific collapse of Islam at the dawn of the industrial revolution.”

The Turkish Republic, during the rule of its founder Kemal Ataturk as of 1923, continued the tradition of censorship by banning “at least 130 newspapers, magazines and books, according to Mustafa Yilmaz and Yasmin Doganer’s book, ‘Censor During the Republican era (1923-1973).’” Turkey’s second Prime Minister (1950-1960), Adnan Menderes, banned 161 publications, according to Bulut.

Returning to archival censorship, Bulut quoted Turkish-Jewish historian Rifat Bali who “explained the history of disposed or destroyed state archives in his 2014 book, ‘The Story of Destruction of Plundering: Printed or Written words, Dead Letters, Archives Thrown Out (or Sold) for Scrap.’ …The archives of many political parties, the Senate, and several other governmental or non-governmental institutions in Turkey are either closed to public use or no longer exist.” According to Bali, “the archives of the political parties closed down during the September 12, 1980 coup d’état were sent to SEKA (Cellulose and Paper Factories) as scrap paper.”

The Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) archive is the most important one because it is the party of the founding years of the Republic. As Bali wrote: “Some say it [the archive] was burnt. Some say it was thrown away on September 12. Some say, no it hasn’t been thrown away. It is here. So it is a mystery today. A large part of the archive is nonexistent.”

In addition, Bali reported that “the archives of the presidency, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the Ministry of the Interior are closed.” Interestingly, Bali noted the strange story of how “confidential documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were found at a scrap dealer in Ankara in 1998. For the ministry had sold 15 steel safes to a scrap dealer. It was then understood that the ministry sold the safes because of a lack of space at the ministry without even looking what was inside them.”

Bali also reported in his book several other examples of the destruction of important documents:

— “Many of the Turkish Institute of History’s documents – including a letter by Ataturk – have been thrown away;”

— “All minutes of the proceedings of the Senate that was established with the 1961 constitution and remained active until the September 12, 1980 coup d’état were sent to the Cellulose and Paper Factories (SEKA);”

— “When the state-funded Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) moved to a new building in 1965, its authorities said that ‘old documents do not fit a new building’ and sent some of the documents of the archives to SEKA;”

— “When a shortage of paper emerged at SEKA in 1980s, state institutions were called on to send their old papers to the factory. Many archives at institutional level were thus gone;”

— As recently as 2013, Turkish National Library’s old books in Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac were sold by the ton, “as there were no librarians who could read in those languages.”

As an investigative Journaist Uzay Bulut concluded: “with so much information withheld from the Turkish public, state propaganda has created masses who blindly follow whatever state authorities − who have lost their moral compass and never object or speak out even when they see brutal violations of human rights, who do not respect differing opinions or the right to dissent, and who promote an extremely inaccurate version of history – have to say.”

The next time Turkish government propagandists write “our archives are open,” you can send them a copy of this article, the revelations of which from distinguished Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut will shut them up!

October 4, 2017
Americana Executives and ANCA Meet To Resolve a Contentious Relationship

Representatives of the Armenian National Committee of America and senior executives of Americana shopping mall in Glendale met on September 5 and agreed to put their future relationship on a better footing.

This was the first meeting in more than a dozen years between the two groups, precipitated by the refusal of Americana to provide paid advertising space on its billboard for “Architects of Denial,” an Armenian Genocide documentary. The producers of the documentary were told by Americana that the subject was “too political.” This was a puzzling and irritating response since Americana had seen neither the documentary nor the text of the display ad that was being rejected simply because it was about the Armenian Genocide.

After several attempts asking Americana officials to explain the true reason for rejecting the display ad, they became even more adamant in their refusal. The most insensitive sentence in one of their emails to the documentary producers was that Americana had received comments on this controversy “ranging from the Armenian community and the Turkish Consulate.” This highly offensive statement was equating the voices of descendants of the Armenian Genocide to that of a Turkish diplomat who represents a denialist autocratic regime whose predecessors had committed the Genocide!

To make matters worse, this was not the first time that Americana had taken a negative position on an Armenian Genocide-related issue. Three years ago, Americana officials had refused to allow three young Armenians who had leased a kiosk from Americana to sell T-shirts that carried texts related to the Armenian Genocide. After an outcry from the local Armenian community, Americana reversed its decision allowing the sale of the T-shirts. They called their initial decision “a misunderstanding.”

In a similar development last month, shortly before the Glendale Chapter of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) had called a press conference on the public portion of Americana grounds to announce a boycott, Americana officials reversed themselves not only allowing the display ad for the documentary, but “at no cost to the producers.”

This was a positive first step. Americana’s owner, Rick Caruso, agreed to meet with the Armenian National Committee of America to discuss how to improve relations between the local community and the shopping mall.

Mr. Caruso attended the Sept. 5 meeting along with Americana’s Executive Vice President of Operations Jackie Levy, Executive Vice President of Communications Nancy Murray, Senior Vice President of Community Relations Rick Lemmo and Senior Vice President of Planning, Government and Community Relations Sharon Keyser. The Armenian delegation consisted of ANCA-Glendale Chairman Artin Manoukian, ANCA Western Region Board Member Berdj Karapetian, ANCA Western Region Advisory Board Member Harut Sassounian, former ANCA Western Region Executive Director Elen Asatryan, and ANCA Glendale Community Outreach Director Margarita Baghdasaryan.

The Sept. 5 meeting proceeded in a cordial atmosphere. Mr. Caruso agreed to take concrete steps to improve the shopping mall’s relationship with the local Armenian community. Americana promised to form a special community relations team to focus exclusively on its partnership with Armenians.

“We are pleased that Mr. Caruso has agreed to work on initiatives to improve relations with the Armenian American community and regain our trust and confidence,” stated ANCA-Glendale Chairman Manoukian.

In his turn, Jackie Levy, Americana’s Executive Vice President of Operations announced: “We value the very productive meeting with ANCA-Glendale leadership and look forward to strengthening our relationship which includes continuing to celebrate our deep appreciation for the Armenian community. Establishing this new community relations team will ensure that our partnership will continue in a very meaningful way.”

Thus, a long-standing contentious relationship between Americana and the Glendale Armenian community is in the process of being resolved amicably. Mr. Caruso, the owner of Americana, was very gracious in his remarks at the meeting and spoke very positively about Armenians. In the coming months, there will be more contacts between the two sides to come up with plans to strengthen their cooperation so that the disputes are resolved through friendly discussions rather than resorting to protests and boycotts.

More than two dozen Armenians and non-Armenians appeared at the Glendale City Council meeting to complain about Americana’s initial rejection of the display ad. To their credit, all five Glendale City Council members, led by Mayor Vartan Gharpetian, supported the community’s demands and were present during ANCA’s press conference at Americana. Also supporting the Armenian community’s wishes was California State Senator Anthony Portantino who played a major role in helping to resolve the controversy and attended the ANCA press conference.

The resolution of this controversial issue indicates the importance of community participation and activism in matters that affect Armenian Americans.

September 20, 2017
Turks Deny All Evidence of Genocide; Azeris Deny Any Evidence of Corruption

For over a century, no matter what evidence is presented to the Turkish government about their guilt as perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, they always claim it is fake and deny the facts.

Similarly, despite all evidence presented to Azeri leaders about their misuse of billions of dollars for bribery and corrupt practices, they always deny the facts and blame Armenians, other countries and certain individuals who are supposed to be against them!

Last week was no exception. The Guardian and dozens of newspapers around the world reported that the Azeri government had paid around $3 billion in bribery to many individuals and institutions throughout Europe from 2012-2014. The Guardian reported that there were more than 16,000 such transactions. In this major scandal, not only the Azeri government is guilty of corruption, but also all those European officials who took the bribe to carry out illegal favors for the Aliyev regime!

What the Guardian describes as ‘the Azeri Laundromat,’ involves “a scheme to curry influence, pay lobbyists, apologists and European politicians to launder cash [which] comes from companies linked to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, state ministries and the International Bank of Azerbaijan, the country’s largest bank, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The cash was transferred from four offshore-managed UK companies. From there it was spent in various countries, including Germany, the UK, France, Turkey, Iran and Kazakhstan.” The Guardian forgot to add Belgium and Italy!

The illegal Azeri money was funneled to four UK companies through a small branch in Estonia of Danske, Denmark’s largest bank. Two of these shadowy offshore companies were Scottish limited partnerships, Hilux Services and Polux Management, overseen by agents in the British Virgin Islands.

Who are some of the beneficiaries of these illegally transferred funds? According to the Guardian, “one of them is Luca Volonte, the Italian former chair of the Center-Right European People’s party group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Volonte was among PACE delegates who controversially voted against a 2013 report criticizing Azerbaijan’s human rights record. The leaked data shows he received more than $2 million. He has been indicted in Italy for money laundering and corruption amid an investigation of what has been dubbed ‘caviar diplomacy.’ He denies any wrongdoing.”

Another high-profile beneficiary, according to the Guardian, is “Eduard Lintner, a former German MP [Member of Parliament] with the Christian Social Union…. Between 2012 and 2014, when he was no longer an MP, his foundation received 819,000 euros. The cash included 61,000 euro payment made two weeks after Lintner visited Azerbaijan as an election observer. He praised the poll as up to ‘German standards.’ He says the payments were for legitimate work, and that he did not personally benefit from the money or know about the original source of the funds.”

According to the Guardian, “Cash was also sent to Bulgarian and Swiss bank accounts belonging to Kalin Mitrev, who was then a private consultant, but now works for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. Mitrev says the money was private income from legitimate consultancy work and that he was not aware of the original source of the funds. He denies doing any wrongdoing.”

There are also several high-ranking Azeri officials who benefited from these funds. One Azeri firm — Baktelekom MMC — paid more than $1.4 billion into offshore bank accounts.

Interestingly, it was also revealed by a Hungarian newspaper that at the time Hungary extradited Ramil Safarov, the Azeri ax-murderer of an Armenian soldier during NATO exercises in Budapest in 2004, Azerbaijan made several bank transfers totaling $7 million to the Hungarian bank MKB. This is yet another example of Azerbaijan’s corrupt use of secret slush funds to gain favors in Europe and elsewhere.

The Azeris, of course, would not admit their wrongdoing and blamed everyone from Armenians to billionaire George Soros, and the international media. “Azerbaijan’s presidential aide, Ali Hasanov, said the stories by the Guardian and other media partners were a smear…. Hasanov said the regime was the victim of a ‘scandalous’ campaign organized by British intelligence, the Armenian diaspora and the U.S,” according to the Guardian. Hasanov blamed certain anti-Azerbaijan circles who are “controlled by the funds of the Armenian diaspora in the West, in particular the U.S.” Furthermore, the Azeri government blocked access to the website of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) which had published the details of the ‘Azerbaijani Laundromat,’ following a leak of data to the Danish newspaper Berlingske.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced last week that the National Crime Agency will investigate the corrupt practices of the four UK companies linked to Azerbaijan. Also, several members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe intend to expand the existing investigation of Azerbaijan’s persistent corruption schemes!

September 12, 2017
New Documentary Links 1915 Genocide To Recent Azeri Massacres of Armenians

A new Armenian Genocide documentary will be screened in many theaters across the United States and also available “on demand” as of October 7, 2017. Unlike other documentaries on the topic, this one is different and more relevant to today’s non-Armenian viewers. The documentary titled, “Architects of Denial,” and sub-titled “Genocide denied is genocide continued,” links the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 to contemporary massacres of Armenians by Azeris, ethnic kins of Turks, in various cities of Azerbaijan, and threaten to kill Armenians living in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh (Artsakh).

The documentary is produced by two Hollywood celebrities, Dean Cain and Montel Williams. It interviews world famous personalities and experts on the Armenian Genocide, some of them for the first time, such as Julian Assange (WikiLeaks), FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, prominent international lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, Prof. Taner Akcam, one of the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, Dr. Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan, Tom de Wall, an expert on the Caucasus region, Former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans, Cong. Adam Schiff, former Kurdish mayor of Sur, Diyarbakir in Turkey, Abdullah Demirbas, His Holiness Catholicos Karekin II, Bako Sahakyan, President of Artsakh, Prof. Ugur Ungor, an expert on the Armenian Genocide, Baroness Caroline Cox, a member of the UK House of Lords, eyewitness accounts of survivors of both the 1915 Armenian Genocide and the massacres in Baku and Sumgait, Azerbaijan, since 1988, and earlier in the 20th century, and this writer.

The interviews were conducted in several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Armenia, Artsakh, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Russia by camera crews sent to these places at major expense and great risk. The documentary also weaves the commonality of various genocides from Cambodia to Sudan (Darfur), the Holocaust, the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides.

Here are important excerpts from statements made by some of those interviewed by the documentary-makers:

Julian Assange: “Turkey has gone all around the world aggressively lobbying diplomatically to make sure there are no references to the Armenian Genocide, including even the major powers such as the United States.”

Pres. Serzh Sargsyan: “The leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan announce from time to time that they are one nation, but live in different countries. And naturally along with that one nation, they are injecting the ideology of denial.”

Perhaps the most scandalous revelation in the documentary was made by Sibel Edmonds who was fired from her FBI job for informing her superiors about the involvement of high-ranking U.S. politicians in illegal Turkish schemes: “The justification to the excuse the United States government has been using, we are doing this [denial of the Armenian Genocide] for sensitive diplomatic relations. This is a hypocrisy that I have been witnessing, especially with inside knowledge of what takes place in the United States. It started with trying to do the right thing and we fought criminal activities bought and abused and basic retaliation for that.”

Explaining why Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert killed the genocide recognition bill at the last minute, Sibel Edmunds stated: “It was a move that came with a price. He had bribery with cash to lock this vote. He also took bribery in the form of sexual favors during his junket trips to Turkey in a particular hotel that he would stay. Sexual favors would be delivered to him – under-age males. Also it was delivered in his townhouse; it was bribery, foreign bribery which constituted treason. But that was a very small portion of what the FBI has already gathered. In Chicago, he also was directly involved with the notorious Turkish network that handled very large percentage of heroin-related activities, operations, sales in the United States, including receiving cash in suitcases from these particular people, and he and his Chief of Staff; their evidences were monitored. They were bugged not only for audio, but also for video. The FBI had in its possession, starting from 1997 slam dunk evidence in their hands, criminally implicated Dennis Hastert. The State Dept. knows, many people in Congress whom I testified to, they know. And I said, ‘you watch, there would be no accountability and mockery of the entire system.’”

The documentary also shows an original footage in which Azeri soldiers barbarically cut off the heads and ears of Armenian soldiers and civilians during Azerbaijan’s attack on Artsakh during April 2017!

Finally, the documentary-makers question several members of Congress who refuse to answer whether they believe the Armenian Genocide actually took place, except Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (Dem.-Texas) who is shown giving a speech at an Azeri energy conference, where she boasts:” I am a member of the [congressional] Azerbaijan Caucus, enthusiastic member, and supportive member!”

The documentary-makers then ask Cong. Johnson on camera: “do you deny that the Armenian Genocide happened?” She shamelessly answers: “I do deny that!” This is a major scandal for a serving member of Congress to make such a categorical denial which is rarely denied by Members of Congress. The Armenian-American community nationwide and their friends should support her opponent in the next election and those in her district should vote against her to remove her from Congress. Once one of these denialist scoundrels is kicked out of office, other members of Congress will be very careful not to deny the Armenian Genocide. We need to make an example of her!

September 5, 2017
Azerbaijan Forces Bulgaria to Fire Reporter Who Exposed Arms Shipments to Terrorists

Last month, I wrote about Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva’s revelations that Azerbaijan’s state-run Silk Way Airlines had shipped under diplomatic cover 350 planeloads of heavy weapons and ammunition to terrorist groups in Syria and many other countries in the last three years.

On Aug. 24, Dilyana tweeted: “I just got fired for telling the truth about weapons supplies for terrorists in Syria on diplomatic flights.”

Dilyana posted on her facebook page that she was fired due to pressure on the government of Bulgaria by Azerbaijan, as she was about to leave for Syria to continue her investigation.

In an interview with Armenpress, Dilyana said that before her firing she was called by the Bulgarian Special Security Agency and asked about her sources of information for her revelations. She replied that her source was the website of the Embassy of Azerbaijan which was hacked, but she would not provide any further details. Two hours later, she got a phone call from her newspaper, Trud Daily, telling her that she was dismissed.

After she published her article, Dilyana revealed that the Azeri Embassy urged the Bulgarian government to investigate her; as a result she was fired from her job.

The daring Bulgarian journalist, however, refuses to remain silent! She told Armenpress that no one can stop her from continuing her investigation: “They couldn’t stop me two months ago; they couldn’t stop me yesterday to speak out. I just posted on social media. They can’t force an independent journalist to keep silent. I’m not obliged to anybody. I’m obliged to tell the truth to the people, this is my job.”

Dilyana stressed that Bulgaria was well-informed about these illegal weapons’ shipments since she had all the documents proving that the Bulgarian government, several European countries, the United States, and many others had given their approval for this secret and illegal operation!

The Bulgarian journalist urged the United Nations to launch an investigation against Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. In addition, Dilyana appealed for support from independent journalists and the public at large. She emphasized: “I am not the first and last journalist to be fired for doing their job. I don’t have high expectations from the mainstream media, because they have their political agenda, their objectives and their policy. What I expect is to be able to spread this information worldwide not by the mainstream media.”

Dilyana also revealed that Azerbaijan paid Bulgarian journalists to publish articles favorable to Baku. “I can give you a fact obtained from the leaked documents after the cyber-attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy. The Azerbaijani Embassy pays money to journalists for articles in favor of Azerbaijan or articles ordered to be published by Azerbaijan.”

Dilyana insisted that she is determined to continue her work: “I’m going to set up my own on-line media, because no one in Bulgaria will now agree to publish my investigations. I will not be offered a job in the Bulgarian media. So I think about establishing my own media; this is the solution.”

Confirming Dilyana’s revelations is an article by Thierry Meyssan, in the sott.net website, reporting that Operation Sycamore involves at least 17 states and represents several tens of thousands of tons of weapons: “Over the last seven years, several billion dollars’ worth of armament has been illegally introduced into Syria…. Numerous documents attest to the fact that the traffic was organized by General David Petraeus, first of all in public, via the CIA, of which he was the director, then privately, via the financial company KKR with the aid of certain senior civil servants…. New elements now show the secret of Azerbaijan in the evolution of the war [in Syria]…. While Bulgaria was one of the main arms exporters to Syria, it received help from Azerbaijan.”

Meyssan, in his article, quotes Sibel Edmonds — ex-FBI translator and founder of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition — revealing that “Azerbaijan, under Pres. Heydar Aliyev, from 1997 to 2001, hosted in Baku the number 2 of Al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. This was done at the request of the CIA. Although officially wanted by the FBI, the man who [was] then number 2 of the international jihadist network travelled regularly in NATO planes to Afghanistan, Albania, Egypt and Turkey. He also received frequent visits from Prince Bandar ben Sultan of Saudi Arabia.”

The Armenian-American community should invite the distinguished Bulgarian journalist Dilyana to the United States in order to publicize through lectures and press conferences her sensational revelations about Azerbaijan’s illegal weapons’ shipments to terrorists.

August 29, 2017