Ankara 6th High Criminal Court has decided to release Hamit Yıldırım, who is one of the alleged murderers of Kurdish journalist/writer Musa Anter, citing that he has completed 5 years of remand. Yıldırım has been in prison since 2012.
Diyarbakır Chief Prosecutor’s Office had launched an inquiry on Hamit Yıldırım as the hitman as well as Mahmut Yıldırım (Code name Yeşil), retired Colonel Şafak Gevrekçi and confessor Abdulkadir Aygan. The case was transferred to Ankara following the first hearing citing security reasons. The Ankara 6th High Criminal Court has had the case for years, but has not issued a verdict. The case was later combined with the JİTEM case.
The pro-Kurdish news sources has claimed that Hamit Yıldırım had met with an official from National Intelligence Organization (MİT) with a code name “Tayfun” and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) deputy Orhan Miroğlu. It was also claimed in the same news sources that Miroğlu and AKP’s Muhsin Kızılkaya had given statements in court as guarantors of Yıldırım.
Musa Anter, also known as “Ape Musa -Uncle Musa”, was a Kurdish dissident writer and activist. He was a prominent Kurdish writer, journalist and intellectual and was assassinated by clandestine JITEM in September 1992.
Anter was shot at a festival in 1992, in an incident in which Orhan Miroğlu was seriously injured. Some Turkish sources claimed that Abdülkadir Aygan, who was PKK militant and surrendered in 1985, then recruited as part of the first staff of JİTEM (the Turkish Gendarmerie’s illegal Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Service), had said he had been part of a JİTEM unit, along with a “Hamit” from Şırnak, which had assassinated Musa Anter.
Other Turkish sources claimed that the perpetrators was PKK defector Murat İpek who got order from state’s contract killer Mahmut Yıldırım (Yeşil) , or Yeşil himself.
After long investigations, JİTEM was found guilty of Anter assassination and Turkey was fined related to his murder in 2006 by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), who sentenced Turkey to a fine of 28,500 euros. A Diyarbakır court in 2013 allegedly charged four individuals with Anter’s murder, including Mahmut Yıldırım (alias “Yeşil”) and Abdülkadir Aygan.
June 30, 2017
