Retired General Küçük also “Suspect” in Malatya Murder

The Istanbul 13th Heavy Penal Court has continued the Ergenekon trial. The court is now also reconsidering the attack on the State Council in Ankara as part of the Ergenekon trial.

86 defendants, 31 of them detained, continue to be tried for “membership in an organisation which prepared the ground for a military coup.”

Five defendants released, Haberal still detained

The Istanbul 12th Heavy Penal Court, meanwhile, has rejected the objection of Dr. Mehmet Haberal, founder and rector of the Başkent University in Ankara and owner of Başkent Hospital and Kanal B, against his arrest. Seven other academics, some of them also rectors, had been arrested with Haberal.

At the hearing on 8 May, the court ordered the release of five defendants, either because of the length of their detention or because the nature of the crime they are accused may change. Bekir Öztürk (in prison since 21 July 2007), Abdullah Arapoğulları (in prison since 29 January 2008), Rasim Görüm (in prison since 28 May 2008), Oğuz Alparslan Abdülkadir (in prison since 26 January 2008), and Halil Behiç Gürcihan (in prison since 7 June 2008) are being tried under Article314/2 of the Turkish Penal Code.

Evidence from Ümraniye weapons cache

The court further received photos and camera recordings of the 27 hand grenades found in a house in Ümraniye, Istanbul, in June 2007.

According the Ntvmsnbc.com, the police sent the court 38 photographs and a 7 minute 32 second recording. There are also photos of the old wooden trunk in which the weapons were found. The series and lot numbers of the hand grenades can be read.

Speaking at the hearing, retired general and detained defendant Veli Küçük said that two inmates in a prison in Mersin had written an email to the Taraf newspaper saying that he was the organiser or instigator of the murder of three men in Malatya in April 2007. Küçük said that he had been questioned as a supsect in the murders on 6 May in the Silivri prison where he is detained.

Questioning pertaining to State Council attack

At the hearing, defendants in the State Council attack were also questioned. Muzaffer Tekin, a retired army officer who has been suspected of instigating the attack and who is now a detained defendant in the Ergenekon trial, was asked if he knew Osman Yıldırım, one of the persons who had been sentenced for his role in the attack before the case was reopened after the merge with the Ergenekon case. Tekin denied any acquaintance.

The court then asked Tekin why there were 64 SMS messages written from his mobile phone in the night before the attack, between 1 and 1.50 am. Tekin said that he had received a message he liked from a friend and had forwarded it to other friends.

Tekin further claimed that he had last seen Alparslan Arslan, the man who used the gun in the attack, 1.5 years before the attack: “He had a law office in the office building where I had my office. When I heard of the attack, I said to myself, ‘I wonder if it was that lawyer Alparslan, let me call him.’”

Mehmet Demirtaş, a detained suspect in the Ergenekon case, said that he had lived in the home in Ümraniye, where the weapons arsenal had been found, for three years. (EÖ/AG)