Hovhannisyan

MEMORANDUM **

Rima Hovhannisyan (Petitioner), a native and citizen of Armenia, petitions for review of the summary affirmance by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) of her appeal from the decision of the immigration judge (IJ) denying her application for asylum, withholding of deportation, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). We review for substantial evidence. Cordon-Garcia v. INS, 204 F.3d 985, 990 (9th Cir.2000). We grant the petition.

Petitioner’s husband, a citizen of Armenia, was born in the Aziri district of Iran. Petitioner claims that she was persecuted by Armenian nationalists on account of her husband’s ethnicity and her mixed marriage status. Following three incidents with nationalists in 1998, Petitioner came to the United States in November 1998. Her husband and adult daughter went to Russia. The daughter returned to Armenia to live with extended family in a different village. Her son was forcibly inducted into the Armenian army and remains in Armenia.

The IJ denied Petitioner’s application for asylum, concluding that Petitioner’s testimony was “exaggerated, if not fabricated,” and “[tjhere’s nothing in the record other than the respondent’s…

dissenting.

I find that the IJ’s adverse credibility findings is supported by substantial evidence, and therefore dissent.

An appellate court is required to give the IJ’s eyewitness perspective of the parties great deference. See Kataria v. INS, 232 F.3d 1107, 1112 (9th Cir.2000). ‘We must affirm if the BIA’s determination is ‘supported by reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence,’ and we reverse only if ‘the evidence [Hovhannisyan] presented was so compelling that no reasonable fact-finder could fail to find the requisite fear of persecution.’ ” Singh v. Ashcroft, 301 F.3d 1109, 1111 (9th Cir.2002) (quoting INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478, 481, 483-84 , 112 S.Ct. 812 , 117 L.Ed.2d 38 (1992)).

Although the IJ’s decision may not have been a model of clarity, the adverse credibility determination was supported by clear and cogent reasons in the record. In particular, Hovhannisyan claimed in her asylum application that, on September 1, 1998, four men came to her home and beat her and her husband, raped her daughter, and took her son, claiming that they were conscripting him into the military. In her testimony before the IJ, however, she claimed that, in June 1998, when…