Almost immediately after the Mudros Armistice (October 30, 1918), officials deemed responsible by the British for carrying out the so-called Armenian Genocide were arrested in Malta and detained in Istanbul. The Allies then sent them aboard SS Princess Ena Malta and HMS Benbow to the British colony of Malta in an attempted prosecution. Here they were held for about three years from March 1919, while searches were conducted in the archives of Istanbul, London, Paris and Washington.
Giovanni Bonello, judge of the European Court of Human Rights, claims that the prisoners were released in 1921 after they had no legal framework to prosecute them as war criminals. The release eventually took place in exchange for the 22 British prisoners detained by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Soon the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (“Dashnak”) started a murder campaign to play for its own judge. A number of former Ottoman political and military figures, as well as Azerbaijani figures, were murdered between 1920 and 1922. Dashnak defends her actions because of the Turkish role in the Armenian relocations and the Baku massacre, but forget to mention their own role in this matter.