Agence France Presse — English
January 26, 2008 Saturday 9:54 PM GMT
General, lawyer jailed for murder plots in Turkey: Anatolia
ISTANBUL, Jan 26 2008
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.