US-Armenian legal team to meet with German officials over Armenian genocide
compensation claims
Berlin, May 7, IRNA
Germany-Crime-Armenian Genocide
A group of US-Armenian lawyers are scheduled to meet with German officials
on Thursday in Berlin where they are to hold talks with German officials on
a lawsuit which charges two major German banks – Deutsche Bank and Dresdner
Bank – of preventing the recovery of millions in money and assets deposited
by Armenians prior to World War I and the Armenian Genocide, DPA reported
Monday.
The US-Armenian legal team is due to discuss the high profile case with the
director of the international law department of the German foreign ministry,
Goetz Schmidt-Bremme.
The lawsuit also claims that the banks accepted "looted assets" taken by the
Ottoman Turkey government during World War I and the Armenian genocide.
The lawyers are also hoping to meet with representatives of Deutsche Bank
and Dresdner Bank.
Both Germans banks have yet to agree to attend Thursday talks between the
legal team and the German foreign ministry.
According to a class action suit filed at a US court, it is estimated that
the banks took more than $22.5 million in looted assets based on the value
of US dollars in 1915.
Germany’s parliament passed a resolution in 2005 urging Turkey to face up to
its role in the Armenian massacre but fell short of labeling it a genocide.
The motion also stressed that Germany was saddened by the role it played in
the massacres of 1915 as then-imperial Germany was allied to the Ottoman
Empire during the First World War.
German legislators called on the German government to contribute to efforts
to have Turkey and its parliament face up to its history promoting the
setting up of a joint committee of Turkish and Armenian historians, the
opening of Turkish archives and normalizing relations between Ankara and
Yerevan.
Armenia says up to 1.5 million of its people were brutally slaughtered
between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern
Turkey, was falling apart.
Turkey counters that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were killed in
"civil strife" during World War I when the Armenians rose against their
Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.