Kurdish child injured during police raid on wrong house in Bingöl

A family in the Karlıova district of Bingöl has filed a complaint against special operations police officers, accusing them of raiding the wrong house, injuring their 14-year-old child and damaging their home.

The incident occurred on May 12 at around 5.50 am. The mother, father, and three children aged 15, 14, and 9 were at home during the raid.

Police actions 'amount to torture'

The family's lawyer, Yusuf Çakas, told bianet that they will meet with the prosecutor tomorrow.

"A medical report is available, and we will follow up on this until the end," Çakas said.

Çakas claimed that the intensity of the violence increased when one of the police officers saw the Kurdish word "azadi," which means freedom, written on the child's arm cast.

"There is an injury here that exceeds intent and amounts to torture, and the preservation of impunity. This is not just a problem of entering a faulty house. There is a reflex against the Kurdish word written on the child's arm," Çakas said.

According to photographs seen by bianet, the child sustained bruises across his body.

'Sound bomb thrown inside the home'

In his statement as a complainant, the father described the moment of the raid.

"While I was sleeping, an extremely loud noise came and I suddenly got out of bed. When I looked at the corridor, the entrance door was broken and a sound bomb was thrown inside. With the bomb thrown inside, a high light and sound came out," the father said.

According to the father's statement, masked special operations police officers entered the house after the sound bomb exploded.

He said that he and his two sons were forced to lie on the ground and handcuffed behind their backs.

He recounted that an officer stepped on his back with his foot, whereupon one of his children shouted, "My father is a lung patient, he has a psychological disorder, do not touch my father."

The same statement included the allegation that a special operations police officer threatened the family, saying, "Do not make a sound, nobody make a sound, I will shoot you."

Police left after realizing they raided the wrong home

According to the family's statement of complaint, police officers asked about a specific individual, and one of the children responded that the person lived upstairs.

The father stated that the special operations police then left the house without conducting a search, and the incident took place within 7-8 minutes.

According to the father's account, after the special operations police left the house, an officer who identified himself as narcotics police came to him.

This officer told him, "There was a mistake, they entered the wrong house, we apologize, we will cover whatever financial expenses you have."

The father said that he later saw his 14-year-old child lying on the ground with a bleeding nose. The child's right arm was already in a cast because it had been broken previously while doing sports.

After the incident, the child told his family that he had pain in his left arm and could not move either arm.

Child hospitalized

The child was taken to Bingöl State Hospital, where a fracture was detected in his left arm due to the physical violence applied.

The child was later referred to an ear, nose, and throat doctor due to swelling in his nose. His treatment was completed in the evening hours.

Upon the issuance of a forensic report, the hospital police directed the family to the Child Bureau Directorate.

The family declared that they would file a complaint after going to the Provincial Police Department.

The father expressed his complaint submitted to the police. "I am filing a complaint and a lawsuit against the Special Operations Police who entered my house by mistake to search it, damaged my property, and injured my son. Since their faces were masked and covered, I cannot identify the police officers." (NÖ/VK)