 |
Ergenekon suspect Saçan confirms JİTEM's existence
Adil Serdar Saçan, a suspect in the case of Ergenekon -- a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government -- and the former anti-smuggling and organized crime department chief, stated in response to a question from a judge in the 31st hearing of the second Ergenekon trial by the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court on Thursday that JİTEM is real.
“Yes it does exist. It is called the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism Command. Later, it was changed to JİT. During the time I served in Muş I worked with JİTEM personnel. There is no single person who’s served in the East who does not know about JİTEM. This unit later got out of control,” he said.
Also on Thursday, Saçan was released with an international travel ban pending trial. An investigation into Saçan was launched in September 2008 by the National Police Department on suspicion of his having “neglected” an earlier investigation into Ergenekon that was launched in 2001 in return for personal gain.
Saçan acquired documents that now are the backbone of the indictment into the group in 2001 during raids into the home of a man named Tuncay Güney, who has been accused of being a double agent for the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and Ergenekon at the same time. He is at large as a suspect in the investigation and currently resides in Canada, where he is a rabbi at a local synagogue. At the time of the 2001 investigation, Güney provided detailed information about the Ergenekon terrorist organization during his interrogation, but Saçan had referred Güney to court only on charges of “falsifying vehicle registration documents.”
Saçan, who stands accused of covering up the Ergenekon file, had initially blamed the intelligence unit of the National Police Department. However, he failed to launch a probe into retired Gen. Veli Küçük, another Ergenekon suspect, despite having acquired all necessary paperwork to commence an investigation. The documents found in Güney’s home were later found again in January 2004 during a raid into a warehouse belonging to Saçan in İstanbul’s Gaziosmanpaşa district.
In Thursday’s hearing, Saçan said” “When Güney and his group were taken in in 2001, the search warrant wasn’t for a probe into the ‘Ergenekon terrorist organization.’ We treated it as an organized crime group. It was in 2007 when we first heard this name. The warrant we had concerned Veli Küçük and his group. It is not true that we had heard of the Ergenekon group but chose to just let it go.”
Also on Thursday, Saçan’s cross-examination took place. Saçan repeated his earlier statement that the group he investigated was not the same as Ergenekon. Saçan was released yesterday after 16 months in jail.
Meanwhile, the criminal record of one of the suspects in the 2005 Council of State shooting and two hand grenade attacks at the Cumhuriyet daily in the same year was sent to the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court on Thursday. İsmail Sığır, one of the suspects in the attack that killed a senior judge, was earlier convicted of being part of a prostitution ring. The Council of State case was merged with Ergenekon last year, after prosecutors established that they were related. However, at the time of the incident the attackers attempted to portray it as a religiously motivated attack.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| MELİH ARAT |  |
||
| Handmade | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
