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Death well case witness threatened, say prosecutors
In a petition he sent to the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor's Office in August, the witness, Mehmet Nuri Binzet, asked to correct what he previously testified to prosecutors in a probe into human remains found inside acid wells in the Southeast.
Binzet stressed in his petition that he had testified against Col. Cemal Temizöz as he wanted to cause the colonel harm because of his own past suffering.
However, according to phone transcripts submitted to the Diyarbakır 6th Higher Criminal Court this week, Binzet was threatened on June 20, 2009 during a phone conversation to withdraw his testimony. The prosecution also claims that Binzet was offered TL 30,000 to withdraw his testimony by a man named Nihat who visited him in prison.
Col. Temizöz was arrested in March based on the testimony of a number of secret witnesses. The testimonies of witnesses detailed five separate incidents of murder committed by Temizöz and another colonel between 1993 and 1997.
Two witnesses, codenamed Sokak Lambası (Street Lamp) and Tükenmez Kalem (Ball Pen), previously withdrew their testimony against the colonel. The third withdrawal of testimony in the probe, however, has raised question over whether the witnesses were under pressure to do so.
In his initial and unaltered testimony Binzet had claimed that the basement of the house of his brother, Kamil Atağ, was turned into an interrogation room in the early 1990s, adding that many people who were suspected of having relations with members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were interrogated in that room.
“I participated in those interrogations several times. Once, upon an order from Col. Temizöz, my brother detained two guys -- İskan Arslan and Nadir Neyci -- and brought them to the interrogation room. Both of them were killed there after the interrogation,” Binzet had claimed.
A recently announced indictment in the investigation into remains found in wells in Şırnak's Silopi and Cizre districts demands that Temizöz be charged with establishing an organization with the aim of committing criminal acts and inciting murder.
According to the indictment, Temizöz set up a group in Cizre after becoming a company commander. The group made extensive use of state power to detain people, interrogate and kill them. The indictment, which deals with 55 unsolved murder cases, demands life sentences without the possibility of parole for the suspects.
Temizöz faces one to nine life sentences without the possibility of parole if convicted.
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