Lawyer Tahir Elci says, “This is in fact a really sad story.” In 1993, six villagers disappeared from Görümlü village in the Silopi district of Sirnak, in the southeast of Turkey.

Eye witnesses say that the six were taken away by soldiers attached to the Görümlü Gendarmerie Battalion.

Elci filed a criminal complaint in the name of the relatives of the missing men, but the case was dismissed this year.

Seven insulted and taken away

“In 1993, the Görümlü Battalion was shot at. Then, on 14 May, seven citizens from Görümlü village and surrounding hamlets were taken away: the village imam Ibrahim Akil, Syriac father and son Hamdin and Hikmet Simsek, Semdin Cülaz, Salih Demirhan, Halit Özdemir and Abdurrahman Kayek. These men were insulted in front of other villagers. The crosses around the necks of the Christian citizens were taken and put around the neck of the imam. They were taken to the the military battalion and then they disappeared.”

Only one returned...

“The village headman (muhtar) Abdurrahman Kayek returned the next day. He said that he had experienced terrible torture and that he had seen the others in detention. He told the prosecutor this as well. Kayek was treated by villagers, but then left Turkey for the United Nation’s Mahmur Refugee Camp in Iraq. Out of fear for his life, he is still living there”.

“The villagers went to the gendarmerie command several times to notify it about the missing men, but nothing happened.”

“At the same time, Amnesty International started an urgent action campaign for the missing men.”

Commander twisted story

Elci said, “A few months after the event, commander Mete Sayar, who was commander in the region, told reporter Nuriye Akman in an interview in the ‘Sabah’ newspaper:

‘I will tell you an interesting memory I have. Around two months ago, a man who had been an imam in a village for a year was killed during battle. When we searched him, we found a cross around his neck. He was also not circumcised. We saw that the man we thought was an imam was actually Armenian.’

Elci says, “He does not speak about the village or the people in detail, but we are sure that he is talking about the six men.”

Dismissal, then reinvestigation, then another dismissal 

Following the interview, Elci filed a separate criminal against commander Sayar. However, the criminal complaint relating to the six missing men was dismissed by the prosecution in 2003 with the argument that the gendarmerie had written “There was no gendarmerie battalion in Görümlü at that time”.

However, so Elci, for security reasons the battalion had moved into the garden of the District Gendarmerie Command at the time.

Following Elci’s appeal, the Siirt Heavy Penal Court overturned the dismissal and continued the investigation. The prosecution began to take the statements of men who had been gendarmerie on duty at the time. Then, again, the case was dismissed. “We objected again, but this time the decision was certain.”

Elci says that the only option open now is to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. (TK/AG)