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| |  | | Mehmed Talat Pasha | | | context : | Armenian genocide  | | judgement place : | Ottoman empire | | status : | Sentenced | | particulars : | Sentenced to death in absentia by an Ottoman Tribunal | | position : | Interior Minister and Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire |
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| | | | In November 1918, Talat Pasha fled to Germany on board the Lorelei, accompanied by Enver Pasha and Djemal Pasha.
On 2 November 1918, at the very same moment that Talat Pasha was fleeing from Istanbul Members of Parliament were debating a motion to take up proceedings against Talat Pasha and six other leaders who were on the run. Amongst the charges being brought were those related to the massacres of the Armenians. More precisely, the Ministers implicated were accused of having created “gangs of thugs, whose threats to life, infringement of property rights and slurs on personal honour, rendered these same Ministers guilty of complicity in the resultant tragic crimes”.
After the dissolution of parliament by the Sultan on 21 December 1918, the jurisdiction to try the Ministers in question was set up as a Court Martial. By imperial decree the statutes of a new Court Martial were pronounced on 8 March 1919. It was this court which was to judge the accused that had fled into exile.
To this end, the court ordered the seven top leaders of the Young Turk regime, including Talat Pasha, to appear before the court within ten days, failing which they would be judged in absentia.
With regard to the charges being pressed, these were widened little by little to include, notably “the massacre and destruction of the Armenians”. The accusation was, in effect, that the Ottoman leaders had formulated a vast plan with this as its final goal.
The Court issued its verdict on 5 July 1919. The accused were found guilty of orchestrating Turkey’s entry into the First World War and of having committed massacres against the Armenians.
Talat Pasha was sentenced to death in absentia.
Having gone into hiding under the name of Ali Salieh, Talat Pasha was assassinated in Berlin in 1921 by Soghomon Tehlirian, one of the avengers belonging to the Operation Nemesis. | |     click for more... | | Trial Watch would like to remind its users that any person charged by national or international authorities is presumed innocent until proven guilty. | |  |  | | judgement period : | | | 03.1919 - 05.07.1919 | | | charges : | | | Crimes against humanity
Genocide
Other | | | profile last modified : | | | 27.02.2010 |
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