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JİTEM murder trial to be merged with Ergenekon case
In a case being heard by a Diyarbakır court, 11 ex-PKK members who later worked for JİTEM, a clandestine and highly illegal gendarmerie intelligence unit set up in the late '80s to counter ethnic separatism in the Southeast, have been facing trial for the past 10 years over the deaths of three people killed by JİTEM in 1989.
However, no legal action has been taken against military officials involved in the case, according to lawyer Tahir Elçi, a co-plaintiff attorney representing the victims’ families.
Prosecutors investigating the Ergenekon case yesterday announced they had decided to review the 1989 murder case for possible connections to the Ergenekon organization, based on an appeal from Elçi.
Ergenekon suspects currently on trial include retired generals and other former members of the military. Suspects arrested in operations after the trial’s start in late October last year include high-ranking retired military officers and seven lower-ranking officers on active duty. These individuals have yet to be indicted. JİTEM is thought to be the military branch of Ergenekon, and its existence has been officially denied by the military so far; however, hundreds of unsolved murders in the Southeast in the ‘90s, witness accounts from the area, complaints by families of victims and confessions of former JİTEM members, including the ex-PKK members on trial, have produced a large body of evidence over the past decade leaving no room for doubt in JİTEM’s existence. Documents have also been found showing alleged JİTEM members on the state payroll as public servants as well as other bureaucratic documents regarding their hiring and even their duties.
The 1989 murders
Hasan Caner, Hasan Utanç and Tahsin Sevim were murdered in the İdil district of Şırnak in 1989. At the time, the İdil Prosecutor’s Office investigated nearly a dozen individuals, including Cem Ersever, the commander of JİTEM at the time who was killed by an unidentified assailant in 1993 after making some confessions about JİTEM’s existence; retired Col. Arif Doğan, who is currently jailed as an Ergenekon suspect; and two other gendarmerie officers.
In 1999, the prosecutor’s office ruled the case outside its jurisdiction and referred it to the Diyarbakır State Security Court (DGM). The suspects were accused of having formed a gang with the intent of committing crimes. Doğan was accused of being the leader of a gang inside the gendarmerie that was active in the Diyarbakır area and was suspected of a large number of atrocities. Ersever was accused of working under Doğan’s command and heading a similar group in Silopi.
The prosecutor demanded information from the General Staff, which said the case should be handed over to a military court since members of the military were among the suspects. This is why only the 11 ex-PKK members turned informants could be legally prosecuted, while no legal action has been taken against the four military officers in the past two decades.
“When we investigated what came out of the General Staff case, we saw that the General Staff did not take any action into the military suspects in the probe. This is why we filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutors of the Ergenekon case. They accepted our appeal and will be reviewing the case,” Elçi said yesterday.
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