only boast about my Lord's noble Cross." This enraged Mahmdouh Bey, who drew his revolver and personally executed Maloyan with a pistol shot. The Archbishop's last words after being shot were reportedly, "My God, have mercy on me! Into Your hands I commend my spirit!" The local Kurdish population stripped the clothes from the bodies of the victims, which remained untouched for five hours until they were all collected, doused with petrol, and burned. Perpetrators Reşit Bey Walter Holstein, the Imperial German Consul at Mosul, learned of the deportation and murder of Archbishop Maloyan and every other member of the caravan via a letter which no longer survives, but which was written either by Hilmi Bey or Shefik Bey. Holstein immediately informed the German Ambassador in Constantinople, Hans von Wangenheim, who in turn informed Berlin. The German Foreign Office then issued a formal protest through Ambassador von Wangenheim to the Ottoman Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha. Through Ambassador von Wangenheim, the Imperial German Government demanded that Reşit Bey be removed as Vali of Diyarbekir, "lest his murderous policies lead to the total extermination of the Christians in his area." Instead, Talat Pasha chose to send an ambiguously worded reprimand ordering an end to the killing of non-Armenian Christians to Reşit Bey, who ignored it, remained at his post until March 1916, and was never otherwise reprimanded for his role in the Armenian and Assyrian Genocides. Even though he is now known as the "Butcher of Diyarbakir", Reşit Bey claimed, during a conversation with Ottoman Army officer Rafael de Nogales, to bear no legal or moral responsibility for the systematic massacre of Christians in his province, as he only followed orders from Talat Pasha. According to De Nogales, "Talat had ordered the slaughter by a circular telegram, if my memory is correct, containing a scant three words: Yak - Vur - Oldur, meaning, 'Burn, demolish, kill'. The authenticity of that terrible phrase was confirmed by the press of Constantinople after the Armistice with the publication of a certain telegram which the Ottoman commission engaged in investigating the massacres and deportations had discovered among the papers of the Committee of Union and Progress." Süleyman Nazif, the former Vali of Mosul, had a very different opinion and testified after the Armistice, "The catastrophic deportations and murders in Diyarbekir were Reshid's work. He alone is responsible. He recruited people from the outside in