An İstanbul court has ruled for the release of Erkan Çapkın, an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suspect being tried in the case into the deadly March 2016 bombing in İstanbul’s famed İstiklal Street, due to his health problems.
Mehmet Öztürk had blown himself up on March 19, 2016, killed a total of four people, including three Israeli citizens, and injured 44 others.
Following the incident, five suspects arrested in connection to the attack and appeared before a court on March 10. Doğan News Agency reported on Friday, Çapkın, who is accused of being a member of the terrorist organization, was released due to his health condition in the first hearing of the case. During the hearing, Çapkın reportedly rejected all accusations.
According to a Twitter message posted by pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party’s ( HDP) Diyarbakır Deputy, Sibel Yiğitalp, there are currently 730 seriously ill prisoners in Turkish jails. As 387 of them are in critical conditions, 114 of them are cancer patients. Despite all the applications for release of the critically ill prisoners Turkish justice system, which is under total control of Turkey’s political Islamist autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has only decided to release an ISIL militant on Friday. (SCF with turkeypurge.com) March 11, 2017
