A video recently emerged online, where retired Armenian Colonel Gilbert Levon Minassian, interviewed by a Georgian blogger, Tako Tamuna, confesses without shame his role in the massacre of Khojaly (February 1992):

- You were in Khojaly, too?

- Yes, Khojaly is my business. The Azerbaijanis are looking for me. I cannot count how many times I have stabbed [killed]. It is like that, my dear [this is how things work, dear].

This confession is reminiscent of the interview where Serzh Sargsyan, commander of the Armenian invading troops in 1992, later President of Armenia (2008-2018), stated:

“Before Khojaly the Azerbaijanis thought that they were joking with us, they thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We needed to put a stop to all that. And that’s what happened.”[1]

The Soviet 366th regiment, made of Russian Armenians, was among the main perpetrators of the massacre.[2] Human Rights Watch reported: “Armenian forces killed unarmed civilians and soldiers who were hors de combat, and looted and sometimes burned homes.”[3] The same organization published a partial list of the victims.[4] Foreign journalists observed that at least three of the killed inhabitants of Khojaly had been scalped.[5] The Azerbaijani authorities identified 613 killed civilians, including 106 women and 63 children.

The trajectory of Gilbert Levon Minassian, this self-described criminal against humanity, needs to be recalled. At the end of 1970s, he was a member of the Union of Communist Students. Around 1980, he joined the “political” wing of the (pro-Soviet[6]) “Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia” (ASALA) in France, named “Armenian Liberation” then “Armenian National Movement” (MNA) for the ASALA. The MNA served as a cover for the logistical network of the ASALA,[7] for the exfiltration of the perpetrators of the ASALA’s attacks,[8] and, according to the Turkish diplomacy, for designating to the terrorists their targets.[9] In August 1983, the MNA sided with Monte Melkonian in the ASALA split. Minassian made the same choice and became a member of the MNA’s political bureau.

Regardless, the split did not stop the funding of the lawyers’ costs of arrested ASALA terrorists by the MNA and did not even discourage this group from contributing to the ASALA propaganda. Indeed, Minassian, speaking on behalf of the MNA, attributed the bombing of the headquarters of “Armenian Youth of France” (controlled by the Hunchak Party) in Marseille, on 17 March 1984, to a “Fascist organization controlled by the Turkish government.”[10] In truth, this bombing, like all the other attacks against Armenian associations in France in 1981 and 1984, were false flag actions by the ASALA, as proved by documents seized in Monte Melkonian’s cache in 1985 and read during his trial in 1986.[11]

On 28 July 1984, Minassian took part in the attack of a postal van, aimed to fund the activities of the MNA. Arrested on 2 August of the same year and indicted, he escaped and left France on 28 July 1987. He was sentenced in absentia to life-long imprisonment in 1989.[12] He fled to Greece, then to Yugoslavia. These choices are not surprising. Greece supported Armenian terrorism until the assassination of ASALA leader Hagop Hagopian in Athens, in 1988.[13] Yugoslavia arrested the two assassins of Turkish ambassador Galip Balkar in Belgrade, Harutyun Levonian and Raffi Elbakian (members of the “Armenian Revolutionary Federation”), in March 1983, and sentenced them to twenty years in jail in March 1984, but, in the second half of 1980s, the most aggressive of kind of Serbian nationalism, incarnated by Slobodan Milosevic, started replacing the softened Communism that had prevailed since 1948. Levonian was released, officially for medical reasons, in June 1987, one month before Minassian’s escape. Milosevic, as President of Yugoslavia, pardoned Elbekian in 1990.[14]

Meanwhile, Monte Melkonian had been sentenced to six years in jail (including two suspended), a fine and a permanent ban from the French territory after his release, for illegal possession of weapons, of explosives, and of fake ID documents. On 10 January 1989, the decision to release Melkonian and to expel him to the United States (where he faced a longer sentence) was announced. Melkonian’s lawyers appealed this decision. Minassian went to a telephone cabin, called the headquarters of the Le Parisien newspaper, and threatened to perpetrate bloody bombings in France if Melkonian was extradited to the US, adding that he did not care about his own fate, having been sentenced to life-long imprisonment. Melkonian was eventually expelled to South Yemen[15] (a Communist state, which collapsed in 1990 and merged with the North Yemen). Like his friend Minassian, Melkonian went to Armenia in 1990 and became an officer of the Armenian army, taking part to the invasion of Karabakh and to the expulsions of Azerbaijani civilians. He was killed in action by Azerbaijani soldiers in 1993.[16] In the context of the collapse of the Communist bloc in Eastern Europe, from June 1989 to January 1990, and of intensification of the repression of the Armenian terrorism against the Turks (Sassounian trials in 1984 and 1986, trial of the Orly bombing in 1985, trial of the assault against the Turkish embassy in Ottawa in 1986, all concluded by sentences to life-long imprisonment), Azerbaijan, weakened by seven decades of Soviet occupation, was an easier target than the Turkish diplomatic missions and the Western airports.

Taking profit of the limitation statute and of an error of law committed by the Ministry of Justice in 2004, Gilbert Levon Minassian went back to France, but never asked for a revision of his sentence of 1989. He returned to Armenia in 2020, in order to fight the Azerbaijanis again. That is why the Azerbaijani embassy filed a complaint against him in December 2020.[17] As his recently emerged video indicates, Minassian seems to harbour no remorse for the cruelty and violence he has committed in the past, which demonstrates the dangerous and corrupting influence of extremist ideologies. 

*Image: Gilbert Levon Minassian – Source: Valentine Vermeil, Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD)