Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide - Bogosian Eric. Страница 48

TEHLIRIAN: No, also not.

LEHMBERG: So they’ve vanished, disappeared?

TEHLIRIAN: Up to now I haven’t found a trace of them.

It’s hard to tell if Lehmberg was trying to trip up Tehlirian on his earlier testimony in which he says he saw his family murdered, indeed saw their corpses, or was simply trying to understand what he was saying. Clearly the testimony is inconsistent, and yet Judge Lehmberg (and the prosecuting attorney) gave Tehlirian a pass.

Tehlirian next recounted how he had eventually found his way back to his hometown of Erzincan (neglecting to mention that he did so as a volunteer soldier in the Russian army).

TEHLIRIAN: News came that Erzincan had been taken by the Russians—then I wanted to go back to look for my parents and relatives. I also knew very well there was still money at home and wanted to get it.…

When I arrived I found all the doors shattered and part of the house was destroyed. And after I entered the house I collapsed.… After I came to, I went to two Armenian families who had converted to Islam; they were the only families in the entire city who had been saved… two families and here and there individual people, altogether around twenty people, but only two families.… I found various utensils, everything else had been burnt and was gone. But there was still money there, buried in the ground… forty-eight hundred Turkish pounds.

LEHMBERG: You took that with you?

TEHLIRIAN: Indeed I did.

According to this version of the story, Tehlirian, after escaping Turkey, made it to Tiflis, Georgia, turned around, crossed the Caucasus once more, and returned to his home village in Turkey, covering a distance of five hundred miles, traversing a war zone twice. No one in the court questioned how he accomplished this. Whether Tehlirian actually retrieved hidden loot or not, this narrative would explain to the court how he’d gotten his hands on enough money to travel freely around Europe, find lodging in Berlin, and pay his expenses while apparently unemployed. The recovery of the 4,800 Turkish gold pieces (a small fortune) would have been more than enough to cover his traveling expenses for years.

By 1919, armistice had been declared and Constantinople, now under British control, was flooded with refugees. Tehlirian testified that he had traveled to the imperial capital because he wanted to place an advertisement in a newspaper in the hope of locating his lost relatives. He repeats this story in his autobiography. What he did not mention in court was that while he was in Constantinople, he assassinated the muhtar Megerdichian, establishing his credentials as a dependable “weapon” for the ARF.

Having delivered a disorderly and inexact account of his whereabouts prior to his sudden appearance in Berlin, Tehlirian was permitted to step down. At this point, Judge Lehmberg moved to take Tehlirian’s plea. But before that could happen, there was one more attempt on the part of the defense team to shift blame onto the murder victim.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY VON GORDON: I would like to ask the accused if he had read in the papers that Talat Pasha had been sentenced to death by the military court in Constantinople on account of this atrocity.

TEHLIRIAN: I read it and was in Constantinople when Kemal [Kemal Bey, not to be confused with General Mustapha Kemal], one of the massacre’s organizers, was hanged already. At the time the papers wrote that Talat and Enver Pasha had also been condemned to death.

The reporters in the courtroom took Tehlirian’s testimony at face value. Strangely, when the New York Times had first reported the assassination over two months earlier, a greater conspiracy had been hinted at: “The authorities are skeptical as to Tehlirian’s boast that his discovery of his victim’s whereabouts and identity was entirely his own work. They are inclined to the view [that] he is an agent of the Armenian Revolutionary Committee and find support for this theory in the fact that his passport was issued in Paris and has a Geneva visa.” In a follow-up article, the Times reported that “a check for 12,000 marks which Salomon [sic] Tehlirian the assassin of Talat received two days before the crime was committed leads the authorities to believe that this money was sent to him by conspirators to enable him to fly after the deed.”⁵ The “newspaper of record” mentioned a conspiracy and named as co-conspirator the Tashnag (ARF) organization within two days of the killing. Curiously, the Times never followed up on its own suspicions while reporting at great length on the trial. And neither a conspiracy nor the ARF was ever mentioned in court.

Judge Lehmberg preferred the uncomplicated narrative of atrocity and revenge to getting mired in the swampy complexities of political terrain. The court refused to entertain the notion that Tehlirian was anything more than what he said he was. That he might be a pawn in a much larger game was also never hinted at. The indictment was read by the court’s clerk:

The alleged student of mechanical engineering Salomon [sic] Tehlirian, Charlottenburg, Hardenbergstrasse 37, c/o Dittman, since 16 March 1921 in pretrial custody, born 2 April 1897 in Pakarij, Turkey, Turkish citizen, Armenian Protestant, is accused of having intentionally killed the former Turkish Grand Vizier Talat Pasha on 15 March 1921 in Charlottenburg, and of having carried out the homicide with premeditation. Crime according to Article 211 of the Penal Code.

For reasons explained, custody is continued.

Berlin, 16 April 1921.

Regional Court III, Criminal Division 6.

The reading of the indictment triggered another visit to Tehlirian’s version of reality.

LEHMBERG (to the interpreter): Please explain to the accused that the indictment accuses him of having killed Talat Pasha in a premeditated manner.

The defendant remained silent.

LEHMBERG: If you were to answer this accusation with yes or no, which answer would you give?

TEHLIRIAN: No.

LEHMBERG: On earlier occasions you indicated otherwise. You admitted having carried out the deed with premeditation.

TEHLIRIAN: When did I say that?

LEHMBERG: So today you prefer not having said that? Let’s now go back to developments up to Paris. On various occasions, at various times, you admitted that you made the decision to carry out the deed, to murder Talat Pasha.

DEFENSE ATTORNEY VON GORDON: I request that the accused be asked why he considers himself not guilty.

Lehmberg directed the question to the defendant.

TEHLIRIAN: I consider myself not guilty because my conscience is clear.

LEHMBERG: Why is your conscience clear?

TEHLIRIAN: I have killed a man. But I wasn’t a murderer.

LEHMBERG: You say that you feel no remorse? Your conscience is clear? You don’t have any self-reproaches? But you certainly have to ask yourself: Did you then intend to kill Talat Pasha?

TEHLIRIAN: I do not understand this question. After all, I killed him.

LEHMBERG: Did you have a plan?

TEHLIRIAN: I had no plan.

LEHMBERG: When did the idea first occur to you?

TEHLIRIAN: Around two weeks before the deed I felt lousy and I again saw visions of the massacre. I saw my mother’s corpse. This body stood up and stepped over to me and said, “You’ve seen that Talat is here and you’re completely disinterested? You’re no longer my son.”

LEHMBERG (repeating those words to the jury): What did you do now?

TEHLIRIAN: I suddenly woke up and decided to kill the man.

Once again Lehmberg led the defendant.

LEHMBERG: When you were in Paris and Geneva and when you came to Berlin, had you not yet decided this?