Unusually lengthy trial
The protracted trial has now been running for over seven years and the eighth anniversary of the brutal stabbing murders of Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Tilmann Geske will be commemorated on April 18, 2015.
A Turkish court has released two former army officers and an Islamic university scholar who have been in prison for nearly four years on suspicion of involvement in the murder of three Christians in southeast Turkey in 2007.
At hearing no. 101 in the case on January 21, the Malatya High Criminal Court ruled that the three men, former Colonel Mehmet Ulger, Major Haydar Yesil and Ruhi Abat, should be released pending a decision in the case.
"It's a great shame and it leaves us with little hope," said church leader Umut Sahin, who was present when the court decision was handed down. "Unfortunately, we expect the case will now be dragged out for at least another year."
Is the case politically manipulated?
"We were not surprised at all," said the lawyer for the plaintiff, Erdal Dogan, shortly after the panel of three judges and two lawyers announced the decision. He noted that the direction of the case had been changed due to political manipulation over the past 12 months. Along with former General Hursit Tolon, the suspected mastermind of the murders who was set free last June, the newly released suspects claim the deadly plot was directed by the government's former ally and now enemy, the Hizmet movement led by Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen.
The day before the hearing in Malatya, Gülen's lawyer, Nurullah Albayrak, issued a press release accusing the Turkish government of trying to "blame Gülen and his movement, which some have labeled an illegal "parallel" conspiracy to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party" for a series of unsolved murders.
On the witness stand on Wednesday, the accused Ruhi Abat testified that the charges against him were "misinformation" invented by the parallel state. As he left prison that night with his co-accused and was greeted by his family and local journalists, Abat declared that he had been arrested as part of "a dirty plot".
With Wednesday's release of Ulger, Yesil and Abat, all but one of the 20 men originally imprisoned in March 2011 have now been released on bail. They have been ordered by court order not to leave the country until the trial is over. The last of the 20 detainees is imprisoned in another city and his case is being tried separately.
The prosecution has demanded life sentences without the possibility of parole for the five men accused of carrying out the plot. They were released to house arrest in March 2014 and were placed in leg irons.
The hearings will resume on February 18th.
Source: World Watch Monitor
