During the night of 23–24 April 1915, hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire, at the orders of Talat Pasha, including many of his former political allies. This order, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, resulted in the torture and eventually murder of most of those arrested, who were forced to confess to a nonexistent Armenian conspiracy against the empire. The same day, Talat also ordered the shuttering of all Armenian political organizations and diverted the Armenians who had previously been removed from Alexandretta, Dörtyol, Adana, Hadjin, Zeytun, and Sis to the Syrian Desert as opposed to the previously planned destination of central Asia Minor, where they would likely have survived.