Cizre District Governorship did not give permission to the Office of the Cizre Public Chief Prosecutor to investigate the death of 15-year-old Yahya Menekşe under a police panzer during a demonstration in Cizre, Şırnak, in eastern Turkey on February 15, 2008.

Lawyer of Menekşe’s family Rojhat Dilsiz said, “There is a dead person. There are serious witnesses and two Judiciary Medicine reports. This decision is shocking. We have applied to the Regional Administrative Court. The decision of the District Governorship is against the law.”

According to the information Dilsiz gave to bianet, the District Governorship rejected the request on the grounds that the three of the six polices were not at the scene on that day and there is no concrete evidence showing that the other three were part of the incident.

Medical expert Dr. M. Halit Sapan says in the Crime Scene and the Autopsy Report of the Office of the Cizre Public Prosecutor that Menekşe was killed by a solid object going over him. The report of the Office of the Malatya Judicial Medicine also states that the death was of the type that would occur by a vehicle going over one's body.

Menekşe is not the first

In those days, the Human Rights Association (İHD) had stated that the police had used unproportional force in Cizre on February 15 and it had also reminded that in Diyarbakır seven people and in Kızıltepe one child had been killed in the clashes. (NZ/EÜ/TB)