It is pleasant when justice catches up with bad people – the corrupt, the criminal, and the otherwise horrid – and they get what is coming to them. Unfortunately, and more often than not, justice has a far easier time catching up with the small-fry bad folk than it does when it comes to the powerful, the rich, and the connected baddies. Too often, the mighty get away with it, leaving the rest of us to gnash our teeth and hope that there’s another tribunal in the afterlife where they’ll pay for what they got away with in this life. Sometimes, however, justice, vengeance, or karma do catch up with the powerful in this life. Following are forty things about times when powerful bad people ended up paying for it.
40. Most Perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide Escaped Punishment – But Not All
During World War I, the Ottoman Turk authorities sought to end to the restiveness of their oppressed Armenian citizens by putting an end to the Armenians via genocide. Under the guise of “relocating” them from border regions to the interior of their empire, the Ottomans subjected the Armenians to massacres and death marches, interrupted by widespread and horrendous abuses, that claimed the lives of 1 – 1.5 million victims.
Following Turkey’s defeat and surrender at war’s end, desultory efforts were made to bring those responsible to account. However, no international tribunal existed to try the criminals, and their prosecution in Turkish courts eventually petered out due to domestic political pressures. As a result, those who had orchestrated the genocide escaped formal justice, and were able to travel relatively freely throughout much of Europe and Central Asia. That is, until the Armenians decided to bring them to account, vigilante style.