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American Lawyers Sue Turkey For Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

May 15, 2018 By administrator

Harut Sassounian

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
 
On May 16, 2017, during Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit with Pres. Doanld Trump in the White House, Erdogan’s bodyguards, unprovoked viciously attacked Kurdish and Armenian protesters who had gathered outside the residence of Turkey’s Ambassador in Washington, DC. Nine demonstrators were seriously injured!
 
According to the Washingtonian, “at a news conference on June 14, DC police chief Peter Newsham said that ‘rarely have I seen in my 28 years of policing the type of thing I saw in Sheridan Circle.’ The House of Representatives approved a resolution, 397–0, calling ‘for perpetrators to be brought to justice and measures to be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.’”
 
Last July, a federal grand jury charged with assault 19 members of Erdogan’s bodyguards, most of whom had diplomatic immunity. As a result, they could not be arrested and were allowed to fly back to Turkey. Two Turkish-Americans were arrested and later sentenced to a year and a day in jail. Several months after this incident, the charges against most of Erdogan’s bodyguards were dropped on the eve of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Turkey.
 
Fortunately, a group of Washington, DC lawyers were so outraged by the attacks and escape of Erdogan’s bodyguards back to Turkey that they decided last week to sue the Turkish government, two Turkish-Americans and three Turkish Canadians for “violations of international law and hate crimes, as well as assault, battery and false imprisonment.” On May 3, another American law firm filed a separate lawsuit by five of the protesters against Turkey.
 
The Washingtonian reported: “With the US government unable or unwilling to obtain justice for the Sheridan Circle victims, a group of DC lawyers set out to do so themselves. Douglas Bregman had little inkling of the riot, let alone what had provoked it. But what he saw on the news that night horrified him: ‘This guy [Erdogan] gets to come to our country, speak to the President at the White House, then send his thugs to bloody up American citizens just for speaking out?’”
 
The Washingtonian added: “Bregman, 68, runs a civil-practice law firm in Bethesda. Originally from suburban Philadelphia, he got a law degree from Georgetown University in the 1970s and put down roots. He lectures there and at Columbia University law school. Having participated in protests during the 1960s, he sees a need to defend freedom of speech from threats ‘like abuse of power,’ he says. Bregman phoned one of his associates, Andreas Akaras, a litigator at Bregman, Berbert, Schwartz and Gilday. ‘Did you see what happened today at Sheridan Circle?’ he asked. Akaras had joined Bregman’s firm after seven years as an aide to Maryland congressman John Sarbanes. He’d worked on a range of issues related to southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean and developed contacts in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. Bregman asked him to investigate whether any legal restitution was available to the victims.”
 
Bregman then contacted fellow longtime DC attorney Steve Perles. “I have this case that will rely on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act [FSIA],” Bregman said. “You’re the guy who can do it.” Perles has a long experience successfully suing Germany for Holocaust reparations and Iran and Libya to pay for damages for “terrorist acts.”
 
The Washingtonian reported: “working with Bregman and Akaras, Perles is preparing to file suit for hundreds of millions in damages from the Republic of Turkey. ‘Any foreign head of state who unleashes his security force against US citizens exercising their lawful rights on US soil has no protection under FSIA,’ Perles says. Other lawyers agree. A team headed by Agnieszka Fryszman of Cohen Milstein filed a victim-impact statement representing 13 victims of the Sheridan Circle attack, including Murat Yasa and Heewa Arya. The legal team has added Michael Tigar, who successfully sued the government of Chile for assassinating Orlando Letelier with a car bomb at Sheridan Circle in 1976.… Tigar says students at American University law school are putting together the case against Turkey. He’s confident in its strength. ‘It took 16 years, but we got to get $4 million from Chile,’ he says.”
 
Bregman told the Washingtonian: “Somebody needs to be punished. We are willing to put in the time and resources to push back against a fascist government so our clients are vindicated. It is well worth the effort.”
 
The Washington Post concluded: “under U.S. law, the Turkish government may fight, settle or refuse to defend against the lawsuits. In a refusal, a judge could enter a default judgment for the protesters.”





Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: lawyers, sue, Turkey

Glendale lawyers are accused of embezzling Armenian genocide survivor benefits

January 26, 2017 By administrator

Armenian Americans and supporters hold a 2013 candlelight vigil at the Glendale Civic Auditorium in memory of those who died in the Armenian genocide. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

By Andy Nguyen,

(latimes.com) Report Two Glendale attorneys could face disciplinary action after the State Bar of California alleged they embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from a multimillion-dollar settlement relating to the Armenian genocide.

The state bar filed several disciplinary charges last year against Vartkes Yeghiayan and Rita Mahdessian, including misappropriation of funds and moral turpitude. They claimed the couple, who are married, had siphoned more than $300,000 of settlement money stemming from a class-action lawsuit over survivor benefits from the Armenian genocide.

The two have denied the charges.

According to bar documents, the couple misrepresented two nonprofit groups they created to appropriate the funds.

In 2005, a class-action lawsuit was brought against French insurance company AXA S.A. over survivor benefits from descendants of Armenian genocide victims. Yeghiayan and Mahdessian were co-counsels on the case.

The resulting settlement was $20 million, with the insurance company being required to pay $17.5 million. From that settlement, a $3 million Unclaimed Benefits Fund was set up, naming nine specific beneficiaries, according to documents from the state bar.

As part of the fund, any money left after paying the main settlement and administrative costs could be distributed to charitable organizations recommended by the suit’s lawyers — namely Yeghiayan and Mahdessian.

The state bar said one of the nonprofits, the Center for Armenian Remembrance, was created three months after the settlement was approved and based out of the couple’s Brand Boulevard law firm.

The second nonprofit, the Conservatoire de la Memoire Armenienne, also was said to be based out of the attorneys’ office.

According to the state bar, the two then requested more than $300,000 be given to the organizations because they qualified as charitable. However, Yeghiayan and Mahdessian failed to produce any record of charitable activity or disclose their ties to the nonprofits, according to court documents.

The two are accused of using some of the funds on their own law firm and to pay college tuition for their two children.

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: armenian genocide, embezzling, Glendale, lawyers

Turkish lawyers apologize to Armenians for Genocide

April 9, 2015 By administrator

f55267c31ef7fe_55267c31ef835.thumbA scheduled conference devoted to the denial of the Armenian Genocide has angered several Turkish lawyers from Izmir.

The local branch of the Association of Modern Lawyers has issued a statement, apologizing to the Armenians.

The association says that an alliance of lawyers responsible for establishing justice in Turkey is sure that what happened in the Ottoman Empire in the World War II era was a crime of Genocide committed under the  pretext of displacement.

The authors of the statement noted that among the Armenians arrested and exiled to death on April 24, 1915, there were also lawyers and advocates.

“We, as lawyers from Izmir, will not allow that the crimes and the genocide committed against the Armenians be consigned to oblivion. We apologize to the Armenian people on behalf of the organization we are members of,” reads the statement.

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: apologize, armenian genocide, lawyers, Turkish

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