Malatya Murders Blamed on Five Youths, Instigators Have Disappeared

On Monday, 13 April, was the 16th hearing in the murder trial in Malatya, concerned with the killing of three men, Tilman Ekkehart Geske, Necati Aydın and Uğur Yüksel, at the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya on 18 April 2007.

There are twelve defendants in the case, five of them in detention.

Links to gendarmerie explained as "giving information"

The Malatya 3rd Heavy Penal Court listened to İnönü University theology research assistant Ruhi Abat as a witness. According to telephone records, Abat spoke to several gendarmerie intelligence officers 1,415 times in the six months before the murders.

Abat claimed that he and five others had been researching missionary activities for the Strategic Development Office at university and that the intelligence officers had asked him for information on his research.

“…We tried to understand what missionary work there was in Malatya and Adıyaman, and we described the methods used. On the demand of the gendarmerie, I gave a conference on “Missionary activities in the 19th and 20th century” to high-ranking personnel at the Gendarmerie Province Regiment Command building. After that, both police and gendarmerie started asking me for information, sometimes by phone and sometimes by coming to my office. The information I gave the police and the gendarmerie was aimed at answering the criticisms that missionaries had about Islam. I never saw any of the defendants before.”

Abat said that he had met retired Colonel Mehmet Çolak, commander of the gendarmerie regiment, at the conference.

The five detained suspects, Emre Günaydın, Cuma Özdemir, Abuzer Yıldırım, Salih Gürler, and Hamit Çeker, were taken to court from Malatya E-type prison under tight security.

Günaydın had spoken of "getting rich"

Onur Dulkadır, cousin and friend of prime suspect Günaydın, spoke in the witness box. He said that Günaydın, with whom he had attended the same cram school, had boasted of becoming very rich soon, but had not said how. “I don’t know anything else.”

The suspect’s father, Mustafa Günaydın, said: “I still can’t believe that my son would do something like that. My child is scared of blood. Emre entered the university exam twice, but he did not get in. In 2007, he went to the dormitory of the İhlas Foundation. When the foundation management called me and said that he was not fitting in, I took him out. He said that he had found work at a newspaper, and that he would only have to distribute newspapers two hours a day. Later he told me that there was a mysterious person at the newspaper, who had told him lots of things about the PKK and Hizbullah. I told him to stay away from that person.”

Günaydın said that he had worked as a mechanical technician at İnönü University for a time and that he knew around 70 percent of the lecturers and staff at the university.

Journalists heard as witnesses

Zeki Dağ, owner of the Malatya Unity newspaper, said about Varol Bülent Aral, a former journalist arrested under suspicion of instigating the murders: “He came to visit my maternal cousin Hamit Özpolat in Adıyaman. When he saw Varol, he told me that Varol had been involved in events in Adıyaman and that he was known as an untrustworthy person whose name had appeared in newspapers. He told me to dismiss him, and I did. I never saw Varol and Emre speak at the newspaper. He worked for us less than a month.”

Hamit Özpolat, owner of the Adıyaman Tempo radio station and the Frekans newspaper, said that Aral had wanted to publish a newspaper from his office in Adıyaman in 2003, but that he had deAbclined the offer because he had insulted a friend from Malatya. They then fought, and, according to Özpolat, “He then said, ‘Then I will get a guy at the right time and do the necessary.’ During our fight, Aral shouted, ‘You are responsible for the murders in Malatya, murderer, you stuffed towels into people’s mouths and cut their throats!’ People knew me, so they did not leave. When the police came, he said, ‘No one can touch me, I am from the deep state, and I have a certificate of madness.’”

Connection with Ergenekon?

The court asked father Günaydın whether he had been friendly with Prof. Dr. Fatih Hilmioğlu, the rector at İnönü University at the time of the murders. Hilmioğlu was detained in a twelfth wave of police operations as part of the Ergenekon investigation on the day of the hearing.

Günaydın said that he had not been on close terms. He claimed that his son had not had relations to any political party, and described himself as an “old nationalist.”

The court decided to ask the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecution once again whether there was any connection between the Ergenekon organisation and the murders. The next hearing of the case will be on 22 May. (EÖ/AG)