Ottoman army colonel Ismail Hakim-Bey was arrested by Scottish soldiers of the British army on March 7, 1919.
The photo above was taken at the Afyonkarahisar railway station by a professional photographer who arrived in the city on that day together with the executive director of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief James Burton.
With the name of the colonel of the Ottoman army, the chairman of the military commission of Constantinople, one of the direct perpetrators of the massacre of Armenians Ismail Hakim-Bey (1883-1923) are connected the deportation and murder of about 40,000 Armenians.
By order of the “protector of the Armenians” Hakim-Bey appointed by the Young Turk government, 40,000 Armenians were deported and driven into the desert of Deir ez-Zor, where almost all of them died of starvation and disease.
By his order, another terrible crime was committed. Having taken 300 Armenian children out of the orphanage, the Turks drove them into train cars and burned them.
On March 7, 1919, Armenians who had miraculously survived during deportation and massacre noticed and recognized the criminal who called himself “the god of Armenians” at the railway station of Afyonkarahisar. They caught their executioner. Subsequently, the soldiers of the British army took Hakim-Bey under arrest.
“This beast in Deir ez-Zor declared itself ‘the god of Armenians.’ He poured oil on the eighteen train cars with Armenian orphans and burned them for his own pleasure.”
Newspaper “Chakatamart” (“Battle”), Constantinople, June 11, 1919.
Source of the photo: collection of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.
