TESTIMONY: UMRANIYE BOMBS WERE ERGENEKON’S
Today’s Zaman
Nov 14 2008
Turkey
One of the defendants in the court case against Ergenekon, a criminal
network accused of plotting to overthrow the government, testified
yesterday that hand grenades discovered in the summer of 2007 inside
a house in Ä°stanbul’s Umraniye district belong to Oktay Yıldırım,
a retired noncommissioned army officer currently under arrest in
relation to the case.
The 13th hearing in the Ergenekon trial was held yesterday, with
defendants continuing to give their statements. Ali Yigit, one of the
suspects who was previously released from jail pending the outcome
of the trial, claimed that hand grenades found in the Umraniye home
— the discovery that began the Ergenekon investigation — belonged
to Yıldırım. Yigit said he was being constantly threatened in an
attempt to pressure him to not testify that the explosives belonged
to the retired army officer.
"Starting from the moment that I said that the hand grenades belonged
to Yıldırım, I have been subjected to pressure to change my
testimony. I was even warned that my one-and-a-half-year-old son
would be killed if I didn’t change my testimony," Yigit said.
Yıldırım, however, denied possession of the explosives in his
defense statement on Tuesday. "Neither my lawyer nor I saw those hand
grenades [in the Umraniye house]. The court that ruled that they be
detonated did not see them, either," he argued.
The ammunition found in Umraniye was destroyed in accordance with a
court order. He said the allegations against him were political and
groundless. "I am proud to be here," he said. Yıldırım also denied
any previous relationship with Yigit.
Yigit, however, denied Yıldırım’s claims and said he first
met him while Yıldırım and Mahmut Ozturk, another retired
noncommissioned officer who was arrested last June as part of the
Ergenekon investigation, were shopping at the grocery store he ran
with his uncle, Mehmet DemirtaÅ~_.
"My father and I discovered a box of hand grenades in the attic
of my uncle’s house. When I asked about these explosives, my uncle
said they belonged to Yıldırım. He warned me to guard them very
carefully. I didn’t see Yıldırım for two or three months after I
discovered the hand grenades," he explained.
Yigit also said he had been threatened multiple times by the lawyers
representing Ozturk and Muzaffer Tekin, a retired captain currently
under arrest. "Their lawyers told me several times that their clients
were arrested because of this testimony. They warned me to change my
testimony," he added.
The Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court is hearing the case in a
makeshift courtroom inside Silivri Prison near Ä°stanbul. Among the
86 suspects are retired Gen. Veli Kucuk and lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz,
who is known for filing lawsuits against intellectuals over writings
that question or criticize the state line on issues such as Armenian
allegations of genocide. Forty-six of the suspects are in custody,
and the rest have been released pending the outcome of the trial.
The existence of Ergenekon has long been suspected, but the current
investigation into the group began only in 2007, when a house in
Ä°stanbul’s Umraniye district that was being used as an arms depot
was discovered by police.
The Ergenekon indictment, made public in July, claims that the
Ergenekon network is behind a series of political assassinations
carried out over the past two decades for the ultimate purpose of
triggering a military coup and taking over the government. The victims
include secularist journalist Ugur Mumcu, long believed to have been
assassinated by Islamic extremists in 1993; the head of a business
conglomerate, Ozdemir Sabancı, who was shot dead by militants of the
extreme-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)
in his high-security office in 1996; and secularist academic Necip
Hablemitoglu, who was also believed to have been killed by Islamic
extremists in 2002.
Suspects face various charges, including "membership in an armed
terrorist group," "attempting to destroy the government," "inciting
people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey" and other similar
crimes.
JÄ°TEM and Ergenekon trials may be merged
Meanwhile, another court case being heard in the Diyarbakır 3rd High
Criminal Court may be merged with the Ergenekon case.
The Diyarbakır court is hearing a trial of 11 suspects accused of
being members of a clandestine and illegal intelligence agency within
the gendermarie known as JÄ°TEM. In a hearing on Tuesday, co-plaintiff
lawyers in the case demanded that the JÄ°TEM trial be merged with
the Ergenekon trial. The presiding judge is still reviewing the appeal.
–Boundary_(ID_sLKABX2D5dHd/lXzeLi9dA)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress