Officials Claim Lack of Information - Defendants Do not Remember

The second hearing of the trial on the "Return to Life" Operation in the Bayrampaşa Prison (Istanbul) was held on Wednesday (6 April). 39 private soldiers are facing prosecution.

The "Return to Life" operation was carried out on 19-22 December 2000 in 20 prisons in Istanbul. The police violently ended the "death fasts" of hundreds of political prisoners who had protested against a transfer from large wardens to F-type cells with only 3 or 4 prisoners. 30 detainees and inmates and two soldiers died in the course of the operation. Together with the people who died in subsequent hunger strikes, a total of 122 people lost their lives. More than 600 people remained handicapped. At the Bayrampaşa Prison in Istanbul, a total of twelve people died and 55 were injured.

The course of the trial changed one day prior to the hearing (5 April) when the operation plan entitled "Storm" was revealed eleven years after the operation. It is now expected that also the people who gave the orders for the operation will be prosecuted. The plan disclosed detailed information on responsible high rank officials and the interventions carried out in the prisons.

However, the Minister of Justice of the time, Hikmet Sami Türk, and the former Prisons and Arrest Stations General Manager, Ali Suat Ertosun, put forward that they had not been informed about the plan.

Prosecutor had the order to sign the operation order

Yet, according to the Public Chief Prosecutor at the time, the order for the operation came from the Ministry of Justice.

A direct intervention in prisons by the gendarmerie without the request of the prosecution is against the procedures. Records at the Üsküdar (Istanbul) Prosecution revealed that the then Istanbul Public Chief Prosecutor, Ferzan Çitici, signed the written request.

In the minutes of 18 December 2000, Public Prosecutor Kemal Canbaz registered, "The Ministry planned to carry out the interventions in the prisons this morning at 5.00 am. Therefore, they wanted the written request for the Gendarmerie's prison intervention to be given to the Provincial Gendarmerie Command".

Forensic Medicine: No weapons in the cells

An expert report based on the investigation of forensic medicine specialists after the operation concluded that bullets were shot only by the soldiers and in the direction of the cells exclusively. The weapons causing the deaths were defined as AK-47 which are only used by the military and as G 3 infantry rifles.

In a search of the prison cells subsequent to the operation, no weapons were found even though the operation plan had suggested otherwise.

Court accepted "Storm" document

The Bakırköy (Istanbul) 13^th High Criminal Court accepted the "Strom" document and decided to release an arrest warrant for Private Hasan Köse who could not be found yet. The court also ordered to obtain copies of all footage of the operation shown on television at the time.

Additionally, the court decided to inquire at the Ankara Public Chief Prosecution about the existence of a police report about the then Minister of Justice Türk, former Minister of Health Osman Durmuş and former Minister of the Interior Saadettin Tantan that was sent to the Turkish Parliament.

"We filmed but we cannot find the material"

It was written in the "Storm" operation plan that the interventions were going to be filmed. However, in a statement from the Gendarmerie it was said that the footage "could not be found".

The plan forwarded to court by the Gendarmerie General Command mentions 16 military officers, among them also Brigadier General Egin Hoş. The court board is going to decide about these 16 military officers at the end of the trial according to the collected evidence. The case was postponed to 27 July in order to complete missing documents.

Soldiers changed their statements

At the Wednesday hearing, ten defendants who did not attend the first hearing gave their statements. These defendants were on duty as privates on the days of the incident. They changed their statements compared to what they had testified before. The same was done by the 27 other defendants who previously testified. In contrary to the statements given five years ago, they now claimed that they were at the Ümraniye Prison and not in Bayrampaşa.

Defendant Abdullah Pala stated, "We were appointed to the external security of the prison. We were dressed like Robocop. We did not have weapons and we did not enter the prison at all. We stayed in Istanbul for three of four days. After our duty, we returned to Elazığ".

In his statement made on 18 March 2006, Pala said that he had been on duty at the Bayrampaşa Prison. "We entered the prison on the order of the commander", he had stated then.

Defendants Murat Yılmaz and Orhan Durgut also changed their statements compared to what they said five years ago. They answered the questions in court by saying "I do not know, I do not remember". (AS/EÖ/VK)