Court probing link between Cage plan and missionary murders

The 28th hearing in the trial, known as the Zirve trial, after the victims’ publishing house, took place yesterday at the Malatya Third High Criminal Court. The panel of judges announced that they would be investigating any links between the trial documents, additional evidence and documents that have been sent to the court related to the Cage plan. The panel said they would be announcing their final opinion on the matter at the next hearing, scheduled for Oct. 15.

The judges also announced that two defendants in the case, Orhan Kartal and Erhan Özen, who are currently imprisoned on convictions unrelated to the Zirve case, will be heard as witnesses at the next hearing. Kartal is jailed in Sivas while Özen is in Amasya, and they have previously testified to public prosecutors about the Zirve case as witnesses.

Presiding judge Eray Gürtekin said at the beginning of the hearing that the main trial documents as well as additional evidence files about the investigation into the Cage plan had finally reached the court. He also said these documents, which are saved on CDs, will be distributed to the lawyers representing the victims’ families and the suspects.

Co-plaintiff lawyer Erdoğan Doğan, addressing the judge yesterday, claimed there was concrete evidence linking the Zirve murders to the Cage Action Plan. He said the two trials should be merged together.

JİTEM discussion

The presiding judge also read out testimony Kartal gave to a public prosecutor in Sivas. Kartal’s testimony included new information on Varol Bülent Aral, a suspect who was detained and later released pending trial in connection with the Zirve murders on charges of inciting Emre Günaydın -- the man who killed the three men -- to commit the murders. Aral previously also testified before the lead prosecutor in the case against Ergenekon, a clandestine terrorist organization nested within state organs and charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

Judge Gürtekin asked Aral at yesterday’s trial whether he knew Kartal. Aral first answered, “No,” but then said, “He is an ex-PKK militant-turned-informant working for JİTEM.” JİTEM is an illegal gendarmerie intelligence agency the official existence of which has long been denied that is believed to be responsible for the thousands of disappearances in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish East and Southeast in the ‘90s. “This terrorist who was trained in Kandil for a long time using the code name Botan later became an informant and started working for JİTEM,” Aral said.

Aral’s lawyer pulls out

Aral also complained in the court that he is never informed about any of the allegations raised against him. “Every lawyer assigned by the bar association is working against me,” he said, which led to a brief quarrel between him and his assigned lawyer, Hasan Duran. Aral threatened his lawyer, saying, “I’ll be out in 11 months, I will see you then.” Duran then announced he would no longer be representing the suspect, saying Aral’s statements had destroyed the necessary relationship between lawyer and client. The panel of judges ruled to send another letter to the bar association to assign a new lawyer to Aral, who was ordered to be removed from the courtroom following an exchange of insults with suspect Emre Günaydın.

New allegations

The testimony Kartal gave in Sivas is as follows: ”I met Varol Bülent Aral while I was an inmate of the Adıyaman Type E Prison in 2008. We became friends. During one of our chats, he told met he worked for Ergenekon and that he had great respect for [key Ergenekon suspect] Veli Küçük. He said the state was behind them and that he was the one who incited the Malatya Zirve Publishing murders and that those kids [the suspects] did not even have the courage to slaughter a chicken. He also told me similar murders would be appropriate. He said only Turks should live in Turkey and that all other minorities had to leave.”

Özen said in his testimony: “I worked as an unofficial intelligence agent for JİTEM between 1997 and 2005. During this time, I coordinated with such individuals as Veli Küçük, Muzaffer Tekin and Levent Ersöz [also Ergenekon suspects]. During this time, from information I heard from Muzaffer Tekin and two other individuals who went by the code names Yusuf and Şiran, there were acts being planned that aimed to weaken the current government and place it in a difficult position. It was also being said that missionary activity in Malatya was growing and that there were going to be operations in this area.”