On 27 July 1983, a terrorist attack took place in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. Five Armenian terrorists from the so-called "Armenian Revolutionary Army" attacked the Turkish embassy, took hostages and detonated explosions inside the embassy. In the course of the attack the terrorists themselves were killed, taking the lives of 2 more people - the wife of the Embassy's Charge d'Affaires Jahide Mykhcioglu and Portuguese policeman Manuel Pacheco.

The terrorists immediately became "heroes" for Armenian nationalists and they continue to be heroised even now. This includes the extremist "Armenian Community of Georgia", which organised events in Tbilisi to mark the 40th anniversary of the terrorist attack:

"Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Lisbon Action. On 27 July 1983, five members of the Armenian Revolutionary Army: Vache Taghlan, Sedrak Ahemian, Simon Yahniyan, Ara Krzhlyan and Sargis Abrahamyan entered the Turkish Embassy in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. One of them, 21-year-old Simon Yahniyan, was killed in the doorway during a clash with the embassy guards, while the other four managed to enter the embassy and set off two explosions. ...."

Last year, the same extremist organisation, the "Armenian Community of Georgia", also celebrated another anniversary of the terrorist attack in Lisbon and an event glorifying terrorists, about which Caucasus Plus has already written in the article "The Armenian Community of Georgia is once again promoting terrorism! ( https://kavkazplus.com/news.php?id=37179 ). A year has passed and the "Armenian Community of Georgia" is still continuing its terrorist propaganda activities, brainwashing the Armenian youth in Georgia with examples of the "heroism" of certain terrorists.

The Armenian Apostolic Church also glorifies the Lisbon Five terrorists. This is in fundamental contradiction to the "Christianity" it proclaims. The Armenian Apostolic Church has forgotten that murder and suicide are mortal sins according to Christian canons. The terrorists of the "Lisbon Five" were solemnly buried in an Armenian church in Beirut, and their graves became a place of pilgrimage for Armenian nationalists, and now their bloody "exploits" are sung year after year by Armenian extremist organisations like the "Armenian Community of Georgia"..

Meanwhile, the current geopolitical situation, especially if we take into account the forces that have been behind Armenian nationalists and Armenian terrorism for decades, makes it necessary to study more closely the history of the "Lisbon Five" terrorists. And such a study allows us to come to the conclusion that this terrorist attack was not an ordinary and "accidental" one, or the initiative of young Lebanese citizens of Armenian nationality, who are out of their minds for reasons of nationalism. It is highly probable that the terrorist act was carried out by very powerful special services, which needed such "heroes" - terrorists - for far-reaching plans and then professionally "covered their tracks".

Here, for example, is what Armenian sources, in particular the "Outside the Lines" portal, wrote about the "Lisbon Five" terrorists:

"None of the participants in the operation had ever been to the homeland. Living in Lebanon, they just listened and explored the country they dreamed of living in one day. The oldest participants in the operation, Simon and Sarkis, were 21 years old. Ara was 20, Vacha and Sedrak 19.

The Turkish Embassy in Lisbon unexpectedly increased the number of police officers patrolling the embassy on the day of the incident. Simon Yahniyan, who loved to play the flute and was always inseparable from his flute, was the first to die in the fight with the police. However, he did not have his flute with him that day. The actions of the 'Armenian Revolutionary Army' were directed exclusively against Turkish officials, so the participants in the Lisbon operation did not return fire on the Portuguese police. Before the operation, it was decided that it would be an act of self-sacrifice that would break the shackles of indifference that buried the Armenian question. The boys had been preparing for the action for a long time ․ they had trained and discussed all the details, but none of their friends and relatives knew or even noticed anything strange in the young people's behaviour. On the eve of the operation, they all lied to their families and gave different reasons for leaving home. ..... The boys are buried together in the Burj Hammoud National Cemetery in Beirut. There is a map of Armenia on the gravestone with five daggers above it. The boys' cemetery is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Armenians living in different parts of the world...".

What conclusions can be drawn from this information? First of all, that the attack was not a "personal invention" of these five terrorists. At the very least, the terrorists were supported by special services and the attack itself was long and carefully prepared.

The fact that all five terrorists are Lebanese born and citizens also speaks volumes. It should be remembered that Lebanon was in the midst of a civil war at the time. At the same time, Lebanon is a former French possession. France seized Lebanon together with Syria after the partition of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War. Even during the Lebanese civil war, almost all the opposing sides were led by politicians and individuals with ties to France, who had studied in France, etc.

In other words, Lebanon was "saturated" with agents of the French secret services. And especially the Armenian community of Lebanon, because it was on Armenian nationalists that France based its plans for "progress" in the Middle East in the 19th century. It was from the Lebanese Armenians that the Armenian terrorist groups, especially ASALA, recruited their "cadres".

The second question is where the terrorist attack took place. Lisbon. The capital of Portugal, which at the time, although a member of NATO, was almost the poorest country in Western Europe, and which had only recently, in 1975, lost its colonial empire in Africa and was experiencing a period of "national breakdown".

The Portuguese were then "insulted" by everyone. Even Indonesia simply took over the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, ignoring the right to self-determination that the former colonisers had agreed to grant the local population.  The collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire was accompanied by the mass expulsion of ethnic Portuguese to their (already poor) historical homeland. At the same time, in almost all the former Portuguese African colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau), Soviet influence and the "construction of socialism" began to grow strongly, but capital from the former French African colonies, where there was already a remarkable symbiosis between the "construction of socialism" and the growth of the neocolonial robbery of these countries by France, began to infiltrate in an unspoken way.

In other words, the attack was most likely carried out by forces that are not really "friendly" to Portugal and are confident that the Portuguese will not "dig up the truth". And even if they do, they are unlikely to cause problems for those behind the terrorists.

Another important point is that in 1983, despite the "anti-Turkish" interpretation of history, the cult of the "Armenian genocide" did not yet exist in the USSR. The Armenians were allowed to build their own "genocide" memorials in their Armenian SSR, but outright Turkophobia, especially when it went beyond the borders of the Soviet republic, was not welcome. This is understandable, since the USSR is home to a large number of Turkic peoples. Nothing was heard of "miatsum" either. And here, for the Soviet Armenians, especially the youth, "imported" "heroes" - terrorists. Soviet Armenian poets dedicate poems to them. And they glorify the "Lisbon Five" much more than other Armenian terrorists of the 70s and 80s of the vulgar century.

Other Armenian terrorists of the period were not all young and were often captured alive and tried, while the Lisbon Five terrorists all died and were not formally tried.  The cult of the "murderous martyrs" was created for the new generation of Armenians who were already disillusioned with Soviet ideology. It was for this generation that was later thrown into the First Karabakh War.

Analysing all the further processes of glorification of terrorists, one can come to the conclusion that the terrorist attack was undoubtedly seriously prepared by certain "curators". It is very likely that the French special services were indirectly involved in the preparation of the Lisbon terrorist attack. Maybe the information about the preparation of the terrorist attack was "leaked" to the Turkish secret service, it is not a coincidence that on the day of the attack the number of policemen guarding the embassy was increased. The client needed dead young Armenian "heroes". All the terrorists were doomed from the start, as those who organised the attack decided to liquidate them all, "hiding the ends in water". What was more important for the client was the destructive influence on the consciousness of young Armenians that the terrorist cult ended up having.

It is clear that the terrorist act was intended to "work for the future". And one of these "prospects" was the separatist wars in the post-Soviet space and the collapse of the USSR, and Armenian terrorists were already supposed to be the "driving force" of these wars. This was later confirmed, if we remember the wars in Karabakh and Abkhazia.

Alexandre Zakhariadze