Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Turkish Court Clears Suspects of Forced Disappearances of Kurds

teleSUR | November 7, 2015

Turkey’s most comprehensive cold case of the historic PKK-state conflict ended with the acquittal of all eight suspects accused of leading a branch of the clandestine gendarmerie group JITEM that reportedly tortured and killed tens of thousands of Kurds in the 1990s.

The case began when mass graves were found in wells of a southeastern town and included 48 hearings on the murder of 55 unidentified victims in Cizre. Beyond conducting extrajudicial killings, JITEM is suspected to have disappeared some 17,000 Kurdish guerrillas, intellectuals and activists.

The families of victims came to the final hearing and participated in a sit-in to protest the verdict, mirroring the weekly sit-ins of the Saturday Mothers, who have still not recovered the bodies of their sons.

Protesters held the picture of Cemal Temizoz, the suspected leader of JITEM, with the word “killer,” but the Eskişehir 2nd High Criminal Court found that “no evidence was viable for a certain, credible and conscientious ruling,” reported the Hurriyet Daily.

The trial was originally in Şırnak, a province still healing from the conflict, but was then moved to Eskişehir, a majority pro-government city where many of the 3 million Kurds forcibly displaced by the conflict migrated.

A deputy of the opposition party CHP told Hurriyet that the lawyers representing the victims’ families were threatened and that evidence was tampered with.

One of the lawyers, Tahir Elçi, was arrested in late October ahead of the Turkish elections for saying publicly that the rebel Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) is not a terrorist group. Secret witnesses that aided Temizoz’s arrest in 2009 retracted their testimonies.

One of the suspects, all of whom were facing life sentences, confessed to extrajudicial killings and reportedly used the ears of his victims from a hearing in 2011 to make prayer beads.

Though the military does not recognize JITEM, it was compromised by officers that used state resources to conduct their operations. This year, four others were tried and exonerated.

Investigations of another 200 murders between 1994 and 1995 reportedly expired, according to official statistics. CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu told journalists during his meeting with former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica that all questions to the ruling AK Party on the unsolved murders were declined.

“Our quest for justice will never end, the state’s justice system backed up the killers,” said the wife of Omer Candoruk, who was forcibly disappeared. “We condemn and curse the mentality that acquitted Cemal Temizoz and his team.”

November 9, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment