1 – Pro-Armenian, Pro-Kurdish Turkish
Philanthropist Jailed in Turkey
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- NAVSEA bids farewell to Sarkis Tatigian, longest serving
civil servant in DoD
3 – Geragos Sues Garcetti for Destroying His Business with
Stay-at-Home Order
4- Sassounian Case Tests How Far Newsom willing to go with CA
prison release
5- In Nevada, Lawyers fighting for Kerkorian heir’s freedom
amid pandemic concerns
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1 – Pro-Armenian, Pro-Kurdish Turkish
Philanthropist Jailed in Turkey
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
It is widely known that the Turkish government deprives the rights of
minorities living in the country, whether they are Armenians,
Assyrians, Greeks, Jews or Kurds. However, the Turks who are the
overwhelming majority of the public are the biggest victims of the
abuses of the Turkish authorities. Tens of thousands of innocent Turks
have been jailed under false pretenses.
One prominent example of such inhuman treatment is Osman Kavala, a
Turkish businessman, philanthropist and human rights activist who has
been jailed on trumped-up charges twice. Last February he was released
from jail for supposedly trying to overthrow the government and then
rearrested the same day before he could be released.
Kavala’s imprisonment made headlines around the world. The European
Court of Human Rights ruled last December that Turkey had jailed him
without reasonable cause. “His detention was intended to punish him as
a critic of the Government to reduce him to silence as an NGO
[non-governmental organization] activist and human-rights defender, to
dissuade others from engaging in such activities and to paralyze civil
society in the country.” The sinister reason Kavala was released from
jail and rearrested the same day was to temporarily comply with the
ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and then jail him under
new charges which would keep in prison several more years while
Kavala’s lawyers contest the new charges in Turkish courts and then in
the European Court of Human Rights.
On April 9, 2020, the New York Times published a lengthy article by
Carlotta Gall titled, “From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to
Political Prisoner.” Gall wrote: “Mr. Kavala has become the most
prominent political prisoner in Turkey, and as he himself ruefully
acknowledged after his rearrest, his case is a prime example of the
state of injustice in Turkey today under President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. His case is just one of half a million prosecutions underway
amid a government crackdown since an attempted coup in 2016, but it is
one of the most confounding. Best known for his good deeds, he has
been variously accused of espionage, links to terrorist groups, and
trying to overthrow the government. Even seasoned lawyers, well used
to decades of political trials in Turkey, have described the various
charges against him as ‘ridiculous.’”
Kavala studied economics at the University of Manchester in the United
Kingdom and started work on his doctorate at the New York School for
Social Research in New York, but interrupted his studies when his
father died in 1982.
Kavala then got involved in defending human rights. He founded Anadolu
Kultur, an organization that supports art and cultural collaboration.
Gall reported that “he supported an arts space in Diyarbakir, the
biggest Kurdish city in the southeast; cultural memory projects for
Yazidis, Kurds, Armenians and other minorities; and a program to
encourage a normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. …
He became one of the leading philanthropists in the country, well
known among embassies and international donors and an energetic
supporter of civic and human rights groups.”
Gall stated that Kavala was jailed because “he represents the
leftist-leaning, secular elite, which in Turkey’s polarized society is
the opposite of the president and his supporters. They are from
religiously conservative, Islamist circles that were long sidelined
from power. ‘Osman represents another culture,’ said Asena Gunal, who
runs his flagship organization, Anadolu Kultur. ‘Someone who is open,
cultured, who speaks English, can talk to foreigners, active in
society; something they see as dangerous.’ As he spent 16 months in
detention without knowing the charges against him, the pro-government
news media and even Mr. Erdogan himself accused him of nefarious
connections, including being part of a Jewish conspiracy led by Mr.
Soros. Some analysts say that his work with Armenians and Kurds is
hated by elements in Turkey’s security establishment.”
Kavala has been urging the Turkish government to recognize the
Armenian Genocide. He visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial in
Yerevan on April 24, 2016. He told News.am: “First of all, there has
to be a sincere intention to look at history, to look at what had
happened, to open up the archives properly, and to have a very sincere
dialogue with the Armenians. Fortunately, there are some steps, but we
still can’t see that at the political level.”
In an interview with Civilnet, a website in Armenia, Kavala praised
the German Parliament’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide “as an
example of a healthy cross-party consensus reviewing the darker
chapters of national history.” Kavala also attended the reopening of
the Sourp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbekir after its renovation.
However, despite his liberal and leftist leanings, Kavala was quick to
dodge Armenian demands from Turkey to return to Armenians their
historic lands. In December 2007, I had quoted him in my column,
“Turkey Could Gain More Than Armenians by Acknowledging the Genocide,”
stating that “it is not possible to dismiss the issue of compensation
so readily.” Kavala responded by sending me an email stating: “I don’t
think that, ‘land return’ is a legitimate demand which can be taken
seriously. Bringing it up would discredit the arguments for justice
and reconciliation.” He naively suggested that we should leave “the
‘land issue’ in the hands of God,” adding that he would happy to meet
with me to talk about this issue.
Nevertheless, the civilized world should speak out for the immediate
release of Kavala, one of the many innocent victims of Pres. Erdogan.
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2- NAVSEA bids farewell to Sarkis Tatigian, longest serving
civil servant in DoD
Some U.S. service members do the four years of their enlistment
contract and get out as soon as they can. Others stick around for 20
years before getting that sweet retirement pension. But an
extraordinary few continue to serve with the military in or out of
uniform until the end of their lives.
Sarkis Tatigian, who began his Navy career at the age of 19 during
WWII and didn’t end it until he passed away last week, was one of
those extraordinary few: his 78-year career sets the record for the
longest serving civil servant in Defense Department history, according
to Naval Sea Systems Command.
“Mr. Tatigian truly lived a life dedicated to advocacy and the service
of others,” said NAVSEA executive director James Smerchansky in the
release. “His decades of work oversaw the expansion of the small
business industrial base and more than $100 billion in contracts
awarded to diverse, small businesses. As we bid fair winds and
following seas to Mr. Tatigian, NAVSEA will greatly miss his presence
but we will never forget the positive impact he made on this command
and the entire U.S. Navy.”
Tatigian started his Navy career in July 1942 as a civilian junior
radio inspector at the naval aircraft factory in the Philadelphia Navy
Yard and at the Navy Office of Inspector of Naval Aircraft in Linden,
New Jersey. He entered the uniformed Navy as an active-duty sailor in
March 1943, and in June 1944 he started working as an aviation
electronics technician’s mate.
Once there, he helped develop the Navy’s first guided anti-ship
munition, the ASM-N-2 “BAT” glide bomb, which became operational by
the end of WWII.
A U.S. Navy ASM-N-2 Bat guided bomb on a Consolidated PB4Y-2
Privateer, probably at the Philadelphia Ordnance District, circa
1944-46. The Bat was a radar-guided glide bomb, considered to be the
first American fully automated and operational guided missile.
The war ended in 1945, but that didn’t mean the end of Tatigian’s time
in the Navy. In 1946, he left active duty and worked with the Bureau
of Ordnance helping develop the Navy’s first generation of
guided-missile systems.
From there, he “moved on to his life’s passion, helping small
businesses, as a small business analyst for the bureau,” according to
NAVSEA.
Tatigian made a small business mobile exhibit and traveled
coast-to-coast with it, an effort for which he received congressional
recognition. In June, 1979, Tatigian was appointed NAVSEA’s associate
director of what came to be known as the Small Business Program
Office, where he continued to serve until this week.
In 2012, the Navy celebrated Tatigian’s 70 years of service by naming
a Small Business Award named after him. Five years later, the Navy
created a one-of-a-kind service pin to celebrate his 75th work
anniversary.
“I was retirement eligible in October 1973,” said Tatigian at the 75th
anniversary ceremony. “But when you don’t have something to wake up
for, that’s when you start to decline. And, if you love what you do
and derive a sense of personal worthiness, it’s not really work.”
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3 – Geragos Sues Garcetti for Destroying His Business with Stay-at-Home Order
By Colin Kalmbacher
Mega trial lawyer Mark Geragos is suing Los Angeles Mayor Eric
Garcetti over the county’s stay-at-home order, alleging the directive
has caused a substantial drop in his law firm’s business and income.
Five separate lawsuits were filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court
over the mayor’s executive order. The first was filed on Thurday, and
four additional complaints were filed Friday morning.
Geragos is suing on behalf of his own business and several
clients—naming both Garcetti and Traveler’s Insurance as co-defendants
in the lawsuits, each of which has been obtained by Law&Crime.
The high profile attorney is also suing in his individual capacity as
a landlord, alleging that he’s “been forced to deal with unpaid rent
and other related issues stemming from its tenants’ cessation of use
with respect to the Insured Premises.”
While the law firm-specific lawsuit concedes the firm is not itself
subject to the mandatory closure order due to its status as an
“essential business,” Geragos argues that indirect effects of the
countywide lock-down have “greatly limited” access to the firm’s
office, which has “suffered immensely.”
“As a further direct and proximate result of the Order, [the law firm]
has been forced to deal with a substantial loss in business traffic
and client / law related business activities,” one of the filings, all
of which are substantially similar, reads.
The lawsuits themselves include Garcetti in order to drive home the
point that the mayor’s executive order prohibits access to various
buildings owned by Geragos and the law firm, “or at least a
significant limitation” on such access in the case of the law firm
itself (due to its status as an “essential business”).
“Plaintiff faithfully paid policy premiums to Travelers, specifically
to provide additional coverages for ‘Business Income and Extra Expense
Coverage’ in the event of business closures by order of Civil
Authority,” the complaint. “Under the Policy, insurance is extended to
apply to the actual loss of business income sustained and the actual,
necessary and reasonable extra expenses incurred when access to the
scheduled premises is specifically prohibited by order of Civil
Authority.”
Each of the complaints solely requests a declaratory judgment that
Garcetti’s order has either created strict prohibitions on such access
or has effectively created such a prohibition due to the
near-cessation of economic activity in Southern California. Such
rulings would trigger the “Civil Authority” portion of various
insurance policies purchased and kept up by Geragos and others, which
are currently being denied by Traveler’s Insurance.
“Travelers has accepted the policy premiums with no intention of
providing any coverage under the Policy’s Civil Authority Coverage
Section due to a loss and shutdown from a virus pandemic,” the
complaint continues.
In other words, the insurance company is refusing to pay out claims by
insisting that the novel Coronavorus (COVID-19) is essentially not
covered by the policies that Geragos, his law firm and clients have
been paying into for years.
One of the lawsuits explains, at length:
(1) the Order by Garcetti, in his official capacity as Mayor of Los
Angeles, constitutes a prohibition of access to Plaintiff’s Insured
Premises; (2) the prohibition of access by the Order is specifically
prohibited access as defined in the Policy; (3) the Order triggers
coverage because the Policy does not include an exclusion for a viral
pandemic and actually extends coverage for loss or damage due to
physical loss and damage, including by virus; and (4) the Policy
provides coverage to Plaintiff for any current and future civil
authority closures of commercial buildings in California due to
physical loss or damage from the Coronavirus under the Civil Authority
coverage parameters and the Policy provides business income coverage
in the event that Coronavirus has caused a loss or damage at the
insured premises or immediate area of the Insured Premises.
“You pay insurance for decades for precisely the unthinkable and when
it happens these insurance companies do the unconscionable,” Geragos
said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Law&Crime reached out to Garcetti’s office for comment on this story,
but no response was forthcoming at the time of publication.
This article appeared in Law & Crime on April 10, 2020.
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4- Sassounian Case Tests How Far Newsom willing to go with CA
prison release
By William Drummond
The COVID-19 pandemic has reportedly infected fewer than a dozen men
among California’s 122,000 state prison inmates. These cases, all in
Southern California, represent a remarkably low number, which is bound
to grow dramatically very soon, when the prison system begins to do
more testing.
The former director of the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, Scott Kernan, has called state prison a “tinderbox of
potential infection.”
California is not alone. The United States is suffering a hangover
from the mass incarceration boom of the past 30 years. Along with
Texas, California leads the nation in the number of persons behind
bars in state prison.
Former federal prisoner Piper Kerman, author of “Orange is the New
Black,” warned in the Washington Post, “Our nation’s prisons and jails
will soon become uncontrollable super spreaders of this pandemic, and
the reach will extend beyond the walls and barbed wire fences.”
Social distance is impossible when two men share a cell the size of a
walk-in closet, as thousands do at San Quentin.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has moved cautiously to defuse the “tinderbox” by
sending more people home. Here’s why that won’t be easy.
Behind every inmate lies a crime. Victims and their families have long
memories, and so do district attorneys who don’t like to see their
work undone. The governor will have to convince Californians to put
aside their desire for punishment in order to protect the public
health. It’s a worthwhile goal, but once Newsom tries to put an
effective prison-release program into effect, he’s bound to run into
an emotional outcry.
At the end of April, Newsom faces a clear test of his determination to
send felons home. San Quentin inmate C88440 Harry Sassounian, who
killed the Turkish consul general in Los Angeles in 1982, will be
eligible to walk free from San Quentin, unless Newsom cancels his
parole, which was issued to him Dec. 27. The governor has 120 days to
veto a lifer’s parole.
Although just one man, Sassounian will be a symbol of just how
determined Newsom is to deal with what many see as a pending disaster
behind bars.
The scale of the present problem is daunting. Thanks to the
incarceration binge, California’s 35 adult institutions have been
operating at 137.5% capacity for the past six years. Bringing the
system to its official “capacity” would mean releasing 32,000 inmates.
Beginning last Friday, Newsom took the initial steps to trim the
crowded prisons. He issued commutations to 21 felons, whose paperwork
was already in the system before the virus struck. Then, on Monday
came the announcement that CDCR was accelerating the departure of
3,494 inmates who already had been given parole dates. CDCR also
blocked the counties from sending the state more felons sentenced by
the Superior Courts. This move was expected to freeze in place another
3,000 county jail prisoners in the coming weeks and months.
Meanwhile, activist attorneys asked a three-judge federal panel to
order CDCR to release the entire cohort of at least 5,000 elderly or
infirm inmates who would be most vulnerable to the virus infection.
But last Thursday the panel turned down the request. Instead the
judges said the lawyers must seek relief by going first to individual
US District Court Judges.
Though significant, the measures the CDCR has promised to implement
would still not produce big enough reductions to achieve meaningful
social distancing. To make a difference, Gov. Newsom would have to dig
deeper and thereby undertake additional risks.
What does he have to fear? His every move is likely to be carefully
scrutinized by some powerful interests. First, victims rights groups
are well organized and vocal. In addition, the right wing nationally
has long seen California as anathema and is waiting for Newsom to
stumble.
And on top of all this, the mainstream media often sensationalize
prison releases.
Many of the released prisoners are notorious, and reporters scan the
list and publish stories repeating the most shocking details of crimes
from decades ago. That’s when writers are allowed to infuse their copy
with descriptive, gratuitous phrases like “brutal.” In fact, prisoners
paroled after serving life sentences have the lowest recidivism rate
of any class of incarcerated people.
In the Sassounian case, the Turkish government has already registered
a sharp protest against his parole. “We strongly condemn and reject
this decision which is subject to the approval of the Governor of
California and is open to appeal. This decision paving the way for the
release of the murderer of our martyred diplomat is not only against
universal principles of law and justice, but also contradicts the
spirit of cooperation in the fight against terrorism,” the statement
said.
Sassounian was found suitable for parole once before in 2017.
Then-Gov. Jerry Brown used his veto power to block his release after
an outcry from the Turks and from the Trump administration.
This article appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on April 7, 2020.
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5- In Nevada, Lawyers fighting for Kerkorian heir’s freedom
amid pandemic concerns
By David Ferrara
Gregory Kerkorian, an heir to the “father of the Las Vegas
megaresort,” turned 74 inside a Nevada prison on Monday.
He’s serving a one- to four-year sentence at Southern Desert
Correctional Center on animal cruelty charges. His lawyers say that
keeping him behind bars during the coronavirus pandemic amounts to
cruel and unusual punishment for a man who suffers from high blood
pressure and psoriasis and is susceptible to infections.
Kerkorian’s lawyers have filed court papers to push for his release
and are asking Gov. Steve Sisolak, Attorney General Aaron Ford and the
Nevada Supreme Court to step in. They wrote that releasing him and
others susceptible to COVID-19 could help mitigate the spread of the
virus throughout the state.
“Now is not the time for zealous, unwavering punishment of people for
nonviolent offenses,” said attorney Michael McAvoyAmaya. “Criminal
justice is supposed to be about protecting the public. We’re doing
nothing to protect the public by keeping these people in prison during
a pandemic.”
The Nevada Sentencing Commission, headed up by Justice James Hardesty,
has scheduled a meeting for Monday. One topic will be “Preventing the
Spread of Communicable Diseases in the Criminal Justice System.”
Officials with the governor and attorney general’s offices declined to
comment, citing the pending litigation in Kerkorian’s case.
Kerkorian, who had no prior criminal history, admitted to neglecting
animals at his residence in Pahrump after his wife died in 2018. He is
eligible for parole in October.
“Every day that the Governor of Nevada delays in exercising his
emergency duties and powers in accordance with the public policy of
Nevada to ensure that Nevada’s prisons do not become an
epidemiological pump for spreading COVID-19 through Nevada’s prisons
and the general public, the more likely (Kerkorian’s) one year
sentence will become a death sentence,” McAvoyAmaya and attorney
Michael Horvath wrote in the 87-page petition.
“Nevada’s prisons are a powder keg waiting to explode with COVID-19
cases that could compromise and overwhelm our criminal justice and
healthcare systems,” the attorneys wrote.
As of Monday, at least three state prison employees had tested
positive for the new coronavirus.
Nevada Department of Corrections spokesman Scott Kelley did not answer
or return phone calls seeking comment for this story. In reply to an
email, Kelley asked for specific questions, but he did not respond to
any questions subsequently emailed to him.
McAvoyAmaya and Horvath are asking Nevada officials to consider
releasing prisoners expected to be released in the next 18 months,
those older than 50 and those who are pregnant or suffer from
pre-existing conditions, such as chronic lung disease or moderate to
severe asthma, heart disease and high blood pressure.
The attorneys argue that, should the virus spread through the prison
system, it could lead to staffing shortages and overburden the
hospital system.
“Our hope is that obviously it benefits our client, but hopefully it
also benefits many others,” Horvath said. “We can’t forget that
inmates are people, too. Out here we’re able to follow the governor’s
orders, but in jail they can’t.”
McAvoyAmaya said he believes the virus will inevitably strike
prisoners directly.
“If it’s not already there, it’s going to be there soon. There’s no
way to get around it,” he said. “Now’s not the time for ruthless
punishment. Now is the time for compassion. Now is the time for
reasoned thinking and doing what’s best for everyone.”
This article appeared in Las Vegas Review-Journal on April 7, 2020.
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