Tevfik Rüştü Aras was the brother-in-law of Nazim Bey, one of the chief organizers of the Armenian genocide. Tevfik Rüştü Aras became Inspector-General of Health Services and was given the task to destroy the bodies of Armenian victims of the genocide. He organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands of kilos of lime over six months. The bodies were dumped into wells which were then filled with lime and sealed with soil. Tevfik Rüştü Aras was given six months to complete the task, after which he returned to Istanbul. H.W. Glockner, a British POW, wrote in his memoirs that he had seen the bodies of murdered Armenians in Urfa thrown into large ditches and covered with lime, just as Tevfik Rüştü Aras has been instructed to do.