KurdistanObserver.com
General, lawyer jailed for murder plots in Turkey
Anatolia
Jan 26, 2008
ISTANBUL - A retired Turkish general and a high-profile lawyer
were jailed pending trial Saturday as part of a crackdown on an
ultra-nationalist group that reportedly plotted to kill Nobel laureate novelist
Orhan Pamuk and Kurdish activists, Anatolia news agency reported.
It was not immediately known what charges the suspects face. The probe is being
carried out behind the shield of a secrecy law that restricts media coverage.
Retired general Veli Kucuk has been accused of organising extra-judicial
killings of Kurds in the 1990s, but never stood trial.
Attorney Kemal Kerincsiz, meanwhile, is notorious for having initiated legal
proceedings against Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was
killed last year, as well as other intellectuals who contested the official line
on the World War I Ottoman era massacres of Armenians.
The two were arrested along with six other suspects, among them a retired
colonel and a well-known gangster, Anatolia reported.
The arrests bring to 13 the number of suspects remanded in custody after the
police rounded up more than 30 people this week as part of a probe into the
discovery of hand grenades and bomb detonators in a house in Istanbul in June.
Media reports said the suspects planned to assassinate Pamuk, the winner of the
2006 Nobel literature prize, prominent journalist Fehmi Koru and Kurdish
politicians Leyla Zana, Osman Baydemir and Ahmet Turk.
Police are also reportedly investigating whether the suspects were involved in
several politically motivated attacks that shocked Turkey over the past two
years, including the murders of Dink, Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and
a senior judge.
Dink's family has raised vocal accusations that the journalist's self-confessed
teenage assassin was incited by people who remain at large and enjoyed the
protection of some members of the security forces.
The media have linked the suspects to the "deep state" -- a term used to
describe members of the security forces who act outside the law for subversive
purposes or to preserve what they consider Turkey's best interests.
