some success, Mujahed continued to employ it in 1982." In mid-July 1983, ASALA violently split into two factions, one opposed to the group's despotic leader, whose nom de guerre was Hagop Hagopian, and another supporting him. Although the lines of fissure had been deepening over the course of several years, the shooting of Hagopian's two closest aides at a military camp in Lebanon finally led to the open breach. This impetuous action was perpetrated by one individual who was not closely affiliated with Monte. As a result of this action, however, Hagopian took revenge by personally torturing and executing two of Monte's dearest comrades, Garlen Ananian and Aram Vartanian. Arrest and imprisonment In the aftermath of this split, Monte spent over two years underground, first in Lebanon and later in France. After testifying secretly for the defense in the trial of Armenian militant and accused bank robber Levon Minassian, he was arrested in Paris in November 1985 and sentenced to six years in prison for possession of falsified papers and carrying an illegal handgun. Monte spent over three years in Fresnes and Poissy prisons. He was released in early 1989 and sent from France to South Yemen, where he was reunited with his girlfriend Seda. Together they spent year and a half living underground in various countries of eastern Europe in relative poverty, as one Eastern Bloc regime after another disintegrated. Armenia On October 6, 1990, Monte arrived in what was then still Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. During the first 8 months in Armenia, Melkonian worked in the Armenian Academy of Sciences, where he prepared an archaeological research monograph on Urartian cave tombs, which was posthumously published in 1995. Finding himself on Armenian soil after many years, he wrote in a letter that he found a lot of confusion among his compatriots. Armenia faced enormous economic, political and environmental problems at every turn, problems that had festered for decades. New political forces bent on dismantling the Soviet Union were taking Armenia in a direction that Monte believed was bound to exacerbate the crisis and produce more problems. He believed that "a national blunder was taking place right before his eyes." Under these circumstances, it quickly became clear to Monte that, for better or for worse, the Soviet Union had no future and the coming years would be perilous ones for the Armenian people. He then focused his energy on Nagorno-Karabakh.