CASE OF SOGHOMON TEHLIRIAN

by Vartkes Yeghiayan (second edition)

The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian is a fascinating, multidimensional document. It is a trial transcript, which offers the reader a front row seat to a riveting trial which established a number of legal precedents. Robert Kempner, a law student who attended the trial and who subsequently became a key prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, has said "For the first time in legal history, it was recognized that other countries could legitimately combat gross human rights violations caused by a government, especially genocide, without committing unauthorized intervention in the internal affairs of another country"

The Case of Soghomon Tehlirian was also instrumental in provoking Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word geno-cide, to investigate the paradox of how a single man, Tehlirian, could be prosecuted for murder, yet the murdered man, Talaat, had almost gotten away after successfully planning and prosecuting the extermination of over a million souls.

Published by Center for Armenian Remembrance in 2006