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Operation Nemesis and Other Historic Paybacks

Khalid Elhassan November 17, 2019 32 min

Armenian Genocide - 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Ahmed Djemal Pasha. Underwood & Underwood

33. Operation Nemesis’ Final Major Target

Ahmed Djemal Pasha was another of the Three Pashas who had ruled the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Also known as al Saffah, or the Blood-shedder, Djemal Pasha was one of the key participants in the Armenian Genocide. After the war, he fled to Germany, then to Switzerland. A Turkish court martial sentenced him to death in absentia.

In 1920, Djemal headed to Afghanistan, where he worked on modernizing its army. With the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War roiling the neighboring USSR, he headed to Tiflis, Georgia, to negotiate with the Soviets on behalf of Afghanistan. There, a trio of Armenian revolutionaries, Atrashes Gevorgyan, Stepan Dzaghigian, and Petros Ter Poghosyan, assassinated Djemal Pasha and his secretary on July 21^st, 1922. He was the last major genocidier brought to account by Operation Nemesis.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.