A Turkish man held in the United States has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that he saw the son of a Turkish provincial governor shoot missing university student Gülistan Doku, helped him put her body in a car trunk and then watched him call the governor’s security officer before saying his father would “make it disappear,” according to a 34-page interview summary sent to Turkey.
Umut Altaş was questioned on August 19 and 20 by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania under a Turkish request for mutual legal assistance.
The FBI sent its report, dated August 26, to Turkish prosecutors through mutual legal assistance channels, Turkish media reported.
The document says Turkish prosecutors supplied 109 questions covering allegations of murder, sexual assault and the destruction or concealment of evidence.
Altaş told investigators that he and Mustafa Türkay Sonel found Doku near a bridge in Tunceli on January 5, 2020, and that she got into their BMW.
He said Sonel drove, he sat in front and Doku sat in back, adding that she asked why they were following her and telling them to leave her alone.
Altaş alleged that Sonel then took a black handgun from the glove compartment and shot Doku.
He said he initially refused Sonel’s order for assistance but later helped him move Doku’s body into the trunk.
Altaş claimed that Sonel then telephoned Şükrü Eroğlu, who served as then-governor Tuncay Sonel’s bodyguard, and spoke with him for 15 to 20 minutes.
He alleged that Sonel told him to stay silent, said his father would “take care of it” and called the next morning to say it had been handled.
Altaş said Sonel later pointed to a site about 30 minutes away on the road to the nearby district of Pertek but acknowledged that he did not see where the body was taken.
Investigators confronted Altaş with cell tower data that put him, Sonel and Eroğlu near the Sarısaltuk Viaduct at around 10:09 p.m. on the night Doku vanished.
License plate records showed Sonel’s BMW heading toward Elazığ with only the driver at 10:17 p.m. and returning toward Tunceli with Altaş in the front passenger seat at 10:30 p.m., according to the interview summary.
After the records contradicted part of his first account, Altaş said he and Sonel had returned to the bridge to look for cameras and that Sonel had told him the cameras would not record.
Altaş also alleged that Sonel threatened to kill him and his family and offered him money to stay silent.
The FBI cautioned that its FD-302 report was an agents’ summary rather than a word-for-word transcript, and Turkish reports noted that Altaş gave conflicting answers during the two-day interview.
In an interview published before his May arrest, Altaş had said Sonel confessed the killing to him, while the new account puts Altaş inside the car as a witness.
US marshals and immigration investigators arrested Altaş at a Manhattan café on May 22 after Turkey obtained an INTERPOL Red Notice and sought his extradition on allegations of murder, aggravated sexual assault and organized crime, the US Marshals Service announced.
Doku, a 21-year-old Kurdish student at Munzur University, disappeared after leaving her dormitory in the eastern province of Tunceli on January 5, 2020. Her body has never been found.
The inquiry first focused on suicide after footage showed her near a reservoir, but her family rejected that theory and prosecutors later said there was no sign anyone had entered the water.
The inquiry, reopened as a homicide case this year, had led to 30 people being jailed pending trial by September 1, among them Mustafa Türkay Sonel, his father, Eroğlu and Doku’s former boyfriend, while Sonel and his father have denied wrongdoing.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
