Malatya ringleader says he was promised immunity for killings
Who was really behind the brutal torture and murder of three Christians in Malatya, Turkey, in April 2007? Did a few Turkish youths carry out the brutal crime on their own, or were they aided and abetted by a secretive nationalist group of police, army, and state officials?
The trial of five Turkish men, aged between 19 and 21, charged with the murders began almost a year ago. The suspected ringleader has told the court that a journalist said he would receive state protection if he killed the three Christians.
Plaintiff attorneys believe the first witness at the hearing on Thursday (Oct. 16), local journalist Varol Bulent Aral, incited the suspected ringleader of the attacks to murder by convincing him foreign missionaries were connected to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a domestic outlawed terrorist organization. The suspected ringleader, Emre Gunaydin, testified that Aral promised him state immunity for the planned attacks.
A separate police investigation has resulted on the arrest and trial of 86 alleged ultra-nationalists belonging to an organisation called Ergenekon. Connections between Ergenekon and the Malatya murders have emerged.
Members of Ergenekon are alleged to have maintained lists of people – including Christians with a missionary background – targeted for killing. The involvement of Ergenekon has been alleged in the murders of Catholic priest Fr Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in February 2006 and three Protestants – Necati Aydin, Tillman Geske and Ugur Yüksel – in Malatya in April 2007. The MIT secret police is known to have maintained observation of the places where all four of these Christians were killed.
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Indeed, the Ergenekon people not only seem to be the masterminds of the Santoro and Malatya murders (and of the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink), they even had a plan to kill the Ecumenical Patriarch – or at least to incite his murder in a way that could not be traced back to them.
The 86 Ergenekon members are accused of conspiring to overthrow Turkey’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, which came to power in a highly charged, but democratic, election in November 2007.
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