"The Judgment of Berlin: Tehlirian between Law and Vengeance" by Carlo Coppola
On March 15, 1921, in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian shot and killed Talaat Pasha, former Ottoman Minister of the Interior and one of the chief architects of the Armenian Genocide. He immediately surrendered to the police. What appeared to be a solitary act of revenge was, in reality, the culminating operation of Operation Nemesis — a secret plan by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to execute those responsible for the genocide who had escaped justice.
For decades the very existence of Operation Nemesis was denied or downplayed. Tehlirian willingly chose to be the only one to pay the price, in the classic style of late-19th and early-20th-century political assassinations (Empress Elisabeth “Sissi”, King Umberto I of Italy, Archduke Franz Ferdinand). Young men — often portrayed as disturbed loners — carried out acts that, upon closer inspection, followed the patterns of ritual killings.
Armenian-American actor and writer Eric Bogosian, in his landmark book Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide (Little, Brown and Company, 2015), reveals that Tehlirian was a carefully chosen agent of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and a genocide survivor himself. The intellectual mastermind behind the operation was, among others, Shahan Natalie. The subsequent trial in Berlin (June 2–3, 1921) was the final, meticulously planned act: Tehlirian was portrayed as a traumatized victim haunted by visions of his massacred family. The defense strategy led to his acquittal on grounds of temporary insanity — a political triumph that transformed the courtroom into an international tribunal against the unpunished crime of genocide.
A completely different perspective is offered by the theatrical play The Defendant is Not Guilty by Tuccio Guicciardini, performed on November 30, 2025, at the Cantieri Teatrali Koreja in Lecce (actors Michele Andrei and Matteo Nigi). Based directly on the original trial transcripts, the work poses the eternal question: is codified justice superior, or the justice that arises from a wounded soul? The Berlin verdict dramatically highlighted the clash between Positive Law and Natural Law — and, for once, ethical justice prevailed.
Yet a veil of profound despair accompanied Soghomon Tehlirian for the rest of his life. As Bogosian notes, he remained simultaneously assassin, victim, and symbol — considered subhuman by those who exterminated his people and silenced by those who armed his hand. He sacrificed his own truth to give voice to one and a half million nameless dead. He died in exile in 1960.
Tags: Soghomon Tehlirian, Operation Nemesis, Armenian Genocide, Talaat Pasha, Berlin Trial 1921, Eric Bogosian, Shahan Natalie, Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Natural Law vs Positive Law, Justice and Vengeance, Tuccio Guicciardini
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