Assassin Boats Of Talaat's Death -nyt19210317
ASSASSIN BOATS OF TALAAT'S DEATH
ASSASSIN BOATS OF TALAAT'S DEATH
'It Is Not I Who Am the Murderer, It Is He' Says Young Armenian
TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 1912
Copyright, 1921, but The New York Times Company.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
BERLIN, March 16. -- The assassination of Talaat Pasha was really the last act of a tragedy whose earlier deserts of Asia Minor. "It is not I who am the murderer. It is he," said the young Armenian, Solomon Teillierian, to the police a moment after firing the fatal shot.
In the course of a later examination Telieran told, how one night his aged parents were dragged from their village home near the Persian frontier by one of the Commissioners of Talaat, who was then Grand Vizier, and were driven into the desert, where they perished.
"Enver since," he said, "I have lived only to revenge the death not only of my own mother and father, but also the persecution and massacres of the Armenian people, of whom Talaat Pasha was the wholesale murderer."
To fulfill that oath of revenge, sworn long ago, is the task to which Teilerian devoted three years. He was baffled again and again, but he perished driver by undying hatred and Oriental cunning. Even so it is still a mystery how at last he tracked down his victim.
It was nearly three years ago when Talaat disappeared from Constantinople and only a few intimate friends knew that he was identical with "All Sali Bey," living in complete retirement in Berlin. Teilerian admits that he spent months wandering over Turkey searching for his prey and says it was an accident which put him on the right trail and brought him here. Without means according to his own story, be worked his devious way to Germany, spurning all hardships, in the certainty that he would find his enemy here. At the end of his examination he said to the police that he regarded the crime with a light heart, adding: "It fills me with happiness to know that when my compatriots hear of his death they will be proud of the deed of their fellow-countryman."
The authorities are aseptically as to Teilerian's boast that his discovery of his victim's whereabouts and identity was entirely his own work. They are inclined to the view 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.
A hard copy of this article or hundreds of others from the time of the Armenian Genocide can be found in The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts From The American Press: 1915-1922