Former district attorney from California David Minier wrote an article describing a trial of Gourgen Yanikian who assassinated two Turkish diplomats in Santa Barbara to avenge the genocide.

“Yanikian, age 78 and a former Fresno resident, was charged with murder, and I was his prosecutor,” Minier wrote in the article published by Fresno Bee.

“The aging Armenian had lured the diplomats to a cottage at Santa Barbara’s exclusive Biltmore Hotel, promising gifts of art treasures for their government. Instead, he pulled a Luger pistol from a hollowed out book and emptied it at them. He then called the reception desk, announced he had killed “two evils,” and sat calmly on the patio awaiting arrest.”

Minier says Yanikian’s purpose was to create an “Armenian Nuremberg” – a show trial to call world attention to the Armenian Genocide.

In contrast two Soghoman Tehlirian  who murdered Talaat Pasha and was acquitted by a Germany jury, Yanikian was sentenced to life in prison.

“Yanikian’s attorneys told the judge they wanted to call as witnesses eminent historians and elderly Armenians who had survived the genocide.”

“He commanded the witness stand for six days and described in detail, without objection, the Armenian genocide.

Yanikian told how, as a boy of 8, he watched marauding Turks slit his brother’s throat, and of the slaughter of 26 other family members. He testified in Armenian, translated by Aram Saroyan, former Fresno grape shipper, San Francisco attorney, and uncle of author William Saroyan.”

Although the jury were moved to tears, the man was sentenced. Hewas granted compassionate release to a care home in 1984, over objection of the Turkish government, and died of cancer two months later.

However, former attorney regrets he had not the courage to allow such evidence. David Minier slams U.S. government for failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide, admitting that chances for genocide resolution passage are remote.

“The House will doubtless take the safer path, as I did in the Yanikian trial.

And once again, truth will fall victim to expedience.”