In 2003, eight dead bodies were found in the Bağcılar village, Kulp district of Diyarbakır province in the Kurdish-majority southeast of Turkey.

Bodies tortured, shot and burnt

In 2007, DNA samples identified two of the bodies as Hasan Örhan and Mehmet Selim Örhan.

Now, three more bodies have been identified as Ali Bulut, Ekrem Bulut and Ramazan Bulut; they disappeared on 12 June 1994.

The identity of the three remaining bodies is still unknown. The bodies were found in a mass grave in Bağcılar village, when the grave was opened following the appeals of the relatives of the disappeared. The bodies bore many bullet wounds, their feet were broken and deformed. The bodies had also been burnt.

The Örhan family is still missing another person, and the Bulut family two.

Detained by soldiers from Bolu Commando

Muharrem Erbey, president of the Diyarbakır branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) told bianet that there was a witness who had been detained together with the Bulut family members by soldiers in 1994, and who was later released. The witness said that the soldiers were from the Bolu Commando Mountain Brigade from the west of Turkey. The prisoners were first taken to a primary boarding school in Lice, a district of Diyarbakır, and tortured there. Then some were released.

Erbey noted that despite the fact that the bodies had been identified, no murder investigation had been initiated by the prosecution yet. IHD Diyarbakır is preparing a criminal complaint against the Bolu Commando Brigade which was on duty in the region at the time, and which has also been pointed towards by the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee.

Similar accusations before

In a different event in Kulp in 1993, eleven people went missing after being arrested in a village called Alacaköyü. Later their bodies were found in a mass grave. The Parliamentary Committee had accused the Bolu Commando Unit of carrying out the operation, and said that it was led by General Yavuz Ertürk who had come from Bolu.

This week, members of the Bulut family spoke with the press at the IHD headquarters in Diyarbakır. The uncle of the missing persons, Abdulbaki Bulut, spoke in Kurdish, demanding the capture of those responsible: “There is no point in hiding anything anymore. We suffering families are expecting support from the state and that those responsible be found.”

Erbey told bianet that the families had applied for information on the missing persons again and again, but that soldiers, police and prosecutors told them that they were not under detained. If they were killed, so the families were told, it would have been by the PKK. (TK/AG)

* This news item is based on an article in the Diyarbakır Olay newspaper.