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Mission: Nemesis

After the Battle of Sarikamish was over, the Ottoman military tribunal condemned to death the Turkish leaders who planned and carried out the Armenian Genocide. Tragically, at the end of the trials all the condemned were found not guilty. The castigated Turks then quickly fled to major cities in Europe attempting to do anything and everything to hide from their past life.

When justice dies: vengeance is born.

In the 1920s, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) approved a confidential resolution referred to as The Special Council to hunt down and punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide. Armen Garo, Shahan Natali and Aaron Sachaklian played key roles in planning the secret operation. The assassination assignment was then given to a small group of extraordinary and dedicated Armenians headed up by Natali who ran the Operation Nemesis actions in Europe. It was named Operation Nemesis after the Greek goddess of retribution: their goal was to avenge the death of some 1.5 million Armenians. They did not view themselves as terrorists, but they were single-minded in their duty to remember those who had suffered and died, and also that the world should take note of the horror perpetrated on their people.

By 1921 the small Nemesis team had studied and planned on how to carry out their mission: they were now prepared to launch their covert operation. The team also had many others to assist them, which operated in seven countries and three continents.

Eventually, the Nemesis team of about ten armed men located and identified the perpetrators along with some of their confederates and assassinates all of them. They carried out their mission with extraordinary acts of vengeance. Author Eric Bogosian in his excellent book, Operation Nemesis masterfully describes how the assassins hunted down the perpetrators.

Assassinated

Fatali Khan Khoyski – June 19, 1920 in Tiflis, Georgia

Talat Pasha – March 15, 1921 in Berlin, Germany

Khan Javanshir – July 18, 1921 in Constantinople

Said Halim Pasha – December 5, 1921 in Rome, Italy

Behaeddin Shakir – April 17, 1922 in Berlin, Germany

Djemal Azmi – April 17, 1922 in Berlin, Germany

Djemal Pasha – July 21, 1922 in Tiflis, Soviet Georgia

The Nemesis covert team closed down after 1922. It disbanded and quickly disappeared-–and was almost forgotten.

Soghomon Tehlirian stands at the center of Bogosian’s story. He was given the task to find and kill Talat Pasha who was the key Ottoman perpetrator. On that fateful day in mid-March 1921, on a quiet street in Berlin, Tehlirian came face to face with Pasha. As he walked past Pasha, he pulled out his pistol and squeezed the trigger. One fatal shot to the back of Pasha’s head: that’s all it took--it was over quickly. He had successfully completed his mission in broad daylight; however, witnesses in the vicinity then quickly grabbed him.

Tehlirian was arrested by the German police and tried for murder. The trial only lasted three days and after an hour of deliberation, the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty. On June 4, 1921 The New York Times headline summed up Tehlirian’s trial with: “THEY SIMPLY HAD TO LET HIM GO.”

Tehlirian then moved to Yugoslavia where he got married. The couple lived in Belgium until 1945 when they moved to San Francisco. He died in 1960 and is buried in the Ararat Cemetery in Fresno California.

Bogosian wrote:

Operation Nemesis was an unprecedented conspiracy designed to avenge an unprecedented modern genocide. With little training, resources, or experience in intelligence operations, this humble collection of businessmen, intellectuals, diplomats, and former soldiers virtually eradicated an entire former government.

We can only hope that serious scholars will someday be allowed to enter the shuttered archives, Turkish and Armenian, to uncover the memories we’re losing, the history we’ve lost, including the full and complete story of this brave group of men possessed of remarkable will and courage. (Bogosian 2015)