Criminal complaint against retired intelligence chief after torture confessions
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The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) has filed a criminal complaint against Mehmet Eymür, a retired senior intelligence officer, after his confessions of torture and extrajudicial killings.
In a lengthy interview with T24 news portal in early this month, and later during a live interview with Halk TV, Eymür admitted that he had been involved in many crimes, including torture.
Eymür served as the head of the Anti-Terror Department of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in the mid-1990s.
He also mentioned the assassinations of 18 businesspeople and writers in the 1990s, claiming that those people were killed for "personal interests" of some state officials.
The HDP announced today (November 17) that its Law and Human Rights Commission had filed a petition with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office regarding Eymür's statements.
"... These statements, which mean the acknowledgment that the people and institutions in question committed the crime of torture, led to a feeling of indignation in the eyes of the public," it said.
"The state network"
In the interview with T24, Eymür acknowledged that the "state network" comprising him and people and institutions working with him committed the crime of torture as per all paragraphs of articles 94 and 95 of Law No. 5237, said the party.
The fact that no investigation has been opened into Eymür's statements is a manifestation of the impunity, which ensures the continuity of grave human rights violations, according to the HDP.
As a statute of limitations does not apply to torture crimes, prosecutors should consider Eymür's statements as evidence and launch an investigation, the party stated.
Also, the Diyarbakır Bar Association requested an effective investigation into incidents of torture, extrajudicial killings and excessive use of deadly force in the 1990s, in a petition it filed with the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. (AS/VK)