MORE GRENADES, HEAVY ARTILLERY DISCOVERED IN ERGENEKON CACHES
Today’s Zaman
Jan 16 2009
Turkey
New caches of weaponry, thought to have been dumped by panicking
members of the Ergenekon gang, were discovered yesterday in various
cities.
In Ankara, 20 hand grenades were found inside a package in the Baglum
district. In Ä°stanbul, one anti-aircraft bullet, 13 bullets for G-3
assault rifles and four hollow cartridge cases were discovered by
municipality workers cleaning the street near Buyukcekmece Cemetery in
Ä°stanbul. The munitions were sent to the Ä°stanbul Police Department
for ballistic examination.
Also yesterday, three hand grenades, 13 shells and "cylindrical
materials that appear to be part of an explosive system" were found
in the central Anatolian city of Aksaray, the governor’s office
announced. The munitions were left in front of a motorcycle repair
shop, the statement said. Six hundred bullets were found inside a
package in Konya that appeared to have been abandoned hastily on a
random street, the police said.
Terrorism expert Ä°dris Bal said members of the Ergenekon organization
might be panicking, as the sprawling investigation has come to
shed light on the bigger picture. "Those who might want to be rid
of evidence or expose more about the group might have left these
munitions." He said, however, another reason behind the abandoned
munitions could be the effort to hide bigger caches elsewhere.
Ali Nihat Ozcan, another expert on terrorist organizations, made a
similar observation. "They might have panicked and decided to get rid
of the materials in their hands so it wouldn’t get them in trouble,"
Ozcan said. He also allowed for another possibility, stating that
the abandoned munitions could be an attempt to scare the public.
A new wave of detentions last week in the Ergenekon investigation
revealed that the group was planning to assassinate Alevi and Armenian
community leaders, the prime minister and members of the Supreme
Court of Appeals, acts that would have dragged Turkey into chaos if
they had been carried out.
Thirty-seven individuals were detained last week in simultaneous
police operations staged in six cities as part of the ongoing
investigation. The new detainees include military officers, a
controversial academic with a background of left-wing political
activism, the former deputy head of the National Police Department’s
Special Operations Unit, seven retired generals and the former head
of the Higher Education Board (YOK).
Last Friday the police discovered a weapons cache buried in a forest
in Ankara’s GölbaÅ~_ı district based on a map found in the home
of one of the newest suspects. Here, officers discovered 30 hand
grenades, three light anti-tank weapons (LAW), plastic explosives,
ammunition for Uzi machine guns and other ammunition buried close
to a road near the capital, officials said. Another weapons cache
was found in an İstanbul house belonging Lt. Col. Mustafa Dönmez,
who turned himself in earlier this week after running from the police
for two days following last week’s operations.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
