Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Identity of Genocide Collaborator Revealed

GLENDALE--The identity of the Ottoman Turkish official who received all correspondence from Talaat Pasha had been revealed, according to an interview with Genocide scholar Dr. Hilmar Kaiser, who recently conducted an interview with Prof. Garabet Moumdjian. Kaiser said, Naim Bey, who was identified as the go-to person for Talaat Pasha in a 1920 book by Istanbul-based journalist Aram Andonian was in fact an individual tied to Talaat's interior ministry. “Naim Bey was a relatively young man in 1916. He was 25 or 26 years old, born in Silifke. In 1916, he worked in Meskene as a deportation official responsible for the dispatch of Armenians to Der Zor. At the time a scandal erupted. Some Armenians had succeeded in bribing officials and managed to escape with the latter's help to Aleppo or avoid further deportation towards Der Zor. The authorities in Aleppo got wind of the affair and ordered an inquiry. Naim Bey managed to keep out of trouble but we know from Aram Andonian that he had taken bribes as well,” said Kaiser in his interview with Moumdjian. Kaiser has set himself as an authority of the Armenian Genocide during the past decade. The bulk of his research is conducted in primary archival material. As of 2005, Kaiser is meticulously conducting research at the Directorate of Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, Turkey, which is now open to historians worldwide, after a 10 year hiatus.

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