Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) -- Founding Group and Faction

The Orly organization was a branch of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), formed to intimidate French authorities into releasing ASALA terrorists held in France.  The group was named after France's Orly Airport, where one such Armenian terrorist was arrested in 1981 for carrying a false passport.  The organization attacked eight times in November of that year, striking a train station (twice), a McDonalds, the Eiffel Tower, a group of tourists sightseeing on the Seine River, and three French targets in Beirut (ASALA's home base).  Attacks ceased for the month of December, but started again in January 1982, when Paris endured bombings at a bank, a convention center, and a cafe.  This wave of attacks, however, was apparently motivated by something other than the Orly arrest; it was claimed as a protest against the trial in Marseille of four ASALA terrorists who had attacked a Turkish Consular office in Paris.  Bombings resumed in the mid-summer as the Orly Organization attempted to force the French to designate the four Armenians as political prisoners and grant them asylum.  Two further bombing attempts were made in Paris, one unsuccessful and one successful (in August and October respectively), this time on behalf of an Iraqi Armenian who had been arrested in Los Angeles for plotting to blow up Air Canada facilities.  Though the Orly Organization conducted 13 attacks in its 11 months of existence, they were not terribly dangerous, having caused no deaths and fewer than twenty injuries.<br />

The Orly Organization has not been heard from since October, 1982, and a rebirth is highly unlikely.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia has become an independent, sovereign state, fulfilling the major objective of most of the terrorists.  Former terrorists now find themselves in the government or the military (or perhaps fighting the Azerbaijanis in the contested province of Nagorno-Kabakh), rather than conducting a campaign of international violence from the shadows.  <br />