Arrest and Execution
Ordered to appear before a court martial in Diyarbakır, together with Vartkes Hovhannes Serengülyan, both went to Aleppoby train, escorted by one gendarme, remained in Aleppo for a few weeks, waited the results of infructuous attempts by the Ottoman governor of the city to have them sent back to the capital (some sources mention Cemal Pasha himself intervening for their return, but Talat Pasha insisting on them to sent to the court martial), and then dispatched to Urfa and remained there for some time in the house of a Turkish deputy friend, taken under police escort and led to Diyarbakır by car -allegedly accompanied on a voluntary basis by some notable Urfa Armenians, and with many sources confirming, they were murdered by the band of brigands led by Cherkes Ahmet, Halil and Nazım, at a locality called Karaköprü or Şeytanderesi in the outskirts of Urfa, some time between 15 July and 20 July 1915. The murderers were tried and executed in Damascus by Cemal Pasha in September 1915, and the assassinations became the subject of a 1916 investigation by the Ottoman Parliament led by Artin Boshgezenian, the deputy for Aleppo.
During the mass arrests and execution that would signal the start of the Armenian Genocide in and around April 24, 1915, Zohrab was feverously working to try to stop the atrocities. As a member of Parliament he was, trying to contact the Turkish authorities and to plea for the immediate cessation of the hostilities. He even contacted his supposed friend Talat Pasha to protest and he demanded redress, but all in vain. Zohrab told Talat that one day he would demand an explanation for these terrible actions. This would be the last time the two would meet. Some in his immediate circle strongly encouraged him to leave the country, but he refused.
The following day, on May 21, 1915, Zohrab was arrested by the Turks, and executed without trial.
Read more about this topic: Krikor Zohrab
Famous quotes containing the words arrest and/or execution:
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“I am gradually drifting to the opinion that this Rebellion can only be crushed finally by either the execution of all the traitors or the abolition of slavery. Crushed, I mean, so as to remove all danger of its breaking out again in the future.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)