WASHINGTON — The legal fight over a proposed Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial has lasted nearly as long as the horrors the project is supposed to commemorate.
Soon, the bitter wrangling will reach a crucial crossroads.
On Monday, in a courthouse about 10 blocks from the run-down site of the proposed museum, three appellate judges will sort through the dispute, which has outlasted several of the key parties. The museum’s future might hang in the balance.
“There is no doubt we are committed to building the museum in Washington, D.C.,” Edele Hovnanian, the treasurer of the Armenian Assembly of America’s board of trustees, said Friday. “We are absolutely committed.”
The case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is still called Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial v. Gerard L. Cafesjian, though this has become a misnomer. Cafesjian, the businessman and philanthropist who won an earlier round, died last year in Naples, Fla., at the age of 88.
Another man once at the center of the dispute, former Cafesjian lieutenant John J. Waters Jr., was convicted last month in Minneapolis of 25 felony counts relating to embezzlement from Cafesjian. Waters is awaiting sentencing.
Years ago, Cafesjian, Waters and the Armenian Assembly of America leadership were allies. They wanted to build a center marking the period from 1915 to 1923, when by some estimates upward of 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
In downtown Washington, project supporters bought a four-story National Bank of Washington building in 2000. Cafesjian provided funding and bought adjacent properties, with a clause that the properties would revert to his control if the project wasn’t finished by Dec. 31, 2010.
Relations eventually collapsed and the first in a series of suits and countersuits was filed in 2007. In 2011, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the property belonged to Cafesjian’s foundation, of which Waters once served as vice president.
Though the museum has plans prepared and an online exhibit posted, the litigation has hindered efforts to raise the $100 million or so needed for construction and operations.
The Armenian Assembly of America has appealed its trial-court loss, contending in part that Kollar-Kotelly had previously undisclosed “ties” to the Cafesjian side.
The 30-minute oral argument Monday comes three days before the events that traditionally recognize the genocide.
