Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 15, 2022
On 15 March 1921, Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha, a leading Ottoman politician and the main architect of the Armenian genocide, in Berlin. About a million Armenians died in the genocide, including most of Tehlirian's family. He joined a clandestine assassination campaign seeking revenge. Tehlirian's trial (pictured) was held on 2 and 3 June 1921, and the defense strategy was to put Talaat on trial for the Armenian genocide. Several eyewitnesses to the genocide testified, resulting in "one of the most spectacular trials of the twentieth century". Tehlirian claimed he had acted alone, telling a dramatic, but untrue, story of witnessing the deaths of his family members. He argued: "I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer", and the jury acquitted him. International news coverage brought attention to the facts of the Armenian genocide. The coverage inspired Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to coin the term genocide and help codify it as a crime in international law. (Full article...)