Turkey's Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned the United States' extradition of Hampig Sassounian, an Armenian-American who assassinated a Turkish diplomat in Los Angeles in 1982.
Turkey learned that Sassounian was "deported to a third country," said a statement by the ministry.
"We consider this decision regarding the aforementioned terrorist a grave mistake and a concession to terrorism and we once again condemn it," Tanju Bilgiç, the spokesperson for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said in the written statement.
Turkish Consul General in Los Angeles Kemal Arıkan was murdered on Jan. 28, 1982, by Sassounian and his accomplice Krikor Saliba on behalf of an Armenian terrorist group.
Sassounian was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, while fugitive terrorist Saliba was allegedly killed in the Lebanese Civil War in 1982.
In 2002, Sassounian signed a declaration renouncing terrorism, was sentenced to life in prison and required to serve a minimum of 25 years. His application for parole had been repeatedly denied until a Los Angeles judge granted it this year.
Bilgiç further said: "It is obvious that such decisions will serve to the agenda of circles seeking to glorify terrorism as a functional tool that can be used for political purposes, not to the fight against terrorism."
Sassounian was convicted of fatally shooting Arıkan while he sat in his car at an intersection in Los Angeles nearly four decades ago. However, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled in favor of his release on parole earlier this year.
In a related development, Sassounian reportedly arrived in Armenia on Friday.
The Public Radio of Armenia, along with other Armenian news outlets, broadcasted a message by Sassounian confirming his arrival in Armenia.
The vast majority of the attacks on Turkish diplomats and citizens in the 1970s and 1980s were conducted by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), both designated as terrorist groups in the U.S. and Turkey. Sassounian belonged to the JCAG.
The assassinations took place in the United States, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, Portugal, Iran and the United Kingdom.
At least 58 Turkish nationals, including 31 diplomats, were killed by Armenian terrorist groups, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
Founded in 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War, ASALA is responsible for hundreds of bloody terrorist acts. While the Marxist-Leninist ASALA not only targeted Turkey but also other countries and became infamous for a 1975 bombing on the Beirut office of the World Council of Churches, the nationalistic JCAG has only targeted Turkey because it believed that attacking other countries would damage the so-called "Armenian struggle."
Armenian terrorist attacks intensified from 1980 to 1983, when 580 of the 699 attacks – over 80% – occurred. The attack at Esenboğa airport in the Turkish capital Ankara on Aug. 7, 1982, was one of the most notorious attacks by ASALA, as the group targeted civilians for the first time. Nine people died and over 80 were injured when two terrorists opened fire in a crowded passenger waiting area at the airport.
The 1981 and 1983 Paris attacks are among the group's other notable acts. ASALA terrorists held 56 people hostage for 15 hours during the Turkish Consulate attack in 1981, while a suitcase bomb killed eight people – most of them non-Turks – in 1983 at a Turkish Airlines check-in desk at Paris' Orly Airport. According to some Turkish officials, after the Orly attack, the group lost much of its support and financial backing from the Armenian diaspora and had to dissolve. The terrorist attacks ended in 1986, according to an Armenian study on terrorism.