Links between Murders in Turkey and ‘Masterminds’ Expected

Witnesses previously barred will be allowed to testify.

ISTANBUL, December 20 (CDN) — Attorneys prosecuting the murder of three Christians in southeastern Turkey are making progress linking the knifemen who slayed them to the masterminds who put them up to it, an attorney representing the family of one of the victims said Friday (Dec.17).

Two witnesses, Veysel Şahin and Ercan Gelni – whose testimony the court previously blocked – will be allowed to testify about the plans behind the killings in Malatya. The judge changed his previous ruling blocking their testimonies because of new evidence that recently became available.

The court will also protect a witness whose testimony would have possibly put him in danger. The latest court hearing was on Dec. 3.

On April 18, 2007, two Turkish Christians, Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, and German Christian Tilmann Geske, were bound, tortured and then murdered at the office of Zirve Publishing Co., a Christian publishing house in Malatya.

The suspects, Salih Guler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker, and Abuzer Yildirim were arrested while trying to escape the scene of the crime, as was alleged ringleader Emre Gunaydin.

 

Establishing Links

Prosecutors have contended that the killings were related to a larger conspiracy by the military and nationalists to destabilize the government by targeting minorities in Turkish society.

“The people responsible are not just confined to the young men caught at the crime scene,” said Orhan Cengiz, one of the attorneys representing the interests of the victim’s families in the case. “Everybody knows the youngsters have connections [to the nationalists].”

The new decision shows the court’s “willingness” to look into possible links between the killers and the gendarmerie, a special police force in Turkey that deals with internal security issues and is allegedly a key player in the destabilization plot, Cengiz said.

Suzanne Geske, widow of Tilmann Geske, said she wants the Malatya murder trial linked with the trial over the Cage Operation Action Plan, believed to be part of the Ergenekon “deep state” operation to destabilize the government.

“I want the Zirve Publishing House killings to be merged with the case into the Cage Operation Action Plan,” Geske told Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. “I do not believe that those young men could have carried out the murders on their own. Some de facto links are evident. There are other influences behind these murders.”

Ergenekon is an alleged “deep state” operation referring to a group of retired generals, politicians and other key figures thought by some to be the true power brokers in Turkey.

The Cage Plan centers on a compact disc found a year ago in the house of a retired naval officer. The plan, to be carried out by 41 naval officers, termed as “operations” the Malatya killings, the 2006 assassination of Catholic priest Andrea Santoro and the 2007 slaying of Hrant Dink, Armenian editor-in-chief of the weekly Agos.

Newspapers have reported that the Cage Plan, aimed at Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities, not only contained a list of names of Protestant Christians who would be targeted, but also named some of their children.

“I believe that there is an ulterior motive behind the killings,” Geske reportedly said. “This may be linked to Ergenekon or another criminal group. I believe that the young men who carried out the murders were directed by criminal elements. I want those criminal elements to be exposed. Otherwise, the lives of those young men will be wasted while the real criminals will go unpunished.”

The next Malatya hearing is scheduled for Jan. 20.

Report from Compass Direct News

Christians in Turkey Acquitted of ‘Insulting Turkishness’

But court heavily fines them for dubious conviction of collecting personal data.

ISTANBUL, October 19 (CDN) — After four years of legal battle in a Turkish court, a judge acquitted two Christians of insulting Turkey and its people by spreading Christianity, but not without slapping them with a hefty fine for a spurious charge.

Four years ago this month, Turan Topal, 50, and Hakan Tastan, 41, started a legal battle after gendarmerie officers produced false witnesses to accuse them of spreading their faith and allegedly “insulting Turkishness, the military and Islam.”

At the Silivri court an hour west of Istanbul, Judge Hayrettin Sevim on Thursday (Oct. 14) acquitted the defendants of two charges that they had insulted the Turkish state (Article 301) and that they had insulted its people (Article 216) by spreading Christianity. Sevim cited lack of evidence.

He found them guilty, however, of collecting information on citizens without permission (Article 135) and sentenced them to seven months of imprisonment each. The court ruled that the two men could each pay a 4,500 lira (US$3,170) fine instead of serving time, said their lawyer Haydar Polat.

Tastan expressed mixed feelings about the verdicts.

“For both Turan and I, being found innocent from the accusation that we insulted the Turkish people was the most important thing for us, because we’ve always said we’re proud to be Turks,” Tastan said by telephone. “But it is unjust that they are sentencing us for collecting people’s information.”

At the time of their arrests, Topal and Tastan were volunteers with The Bible Research Center, which has since acquired official association status and is now called The Association for Propagating Knowledge of the Bible. The two men had used contact information that individuals interested in Christianity had volunteered to provide on the association’s website.

Administrators of the association stated openly to local authorities that their goal was to disseminate information about Christianity.

The two men and their lawyer said they will be ready to appeal the unjust decision of the court when they have seen the official statement, which the court should issue within a month. Polat said the appeal process will take over a year.

“Why should we have to continue the legal battle and appeal this?” asked Tastan. “We are not responsible for the information that was collected. So why are they fining us for this? So, we continue our legal adventure.”

Still, he expressed qualified happiness.

“We are free from the charges that we have insulted the Turkish state and the people of Turkey and we’re glad for that, but we are sorry about the court’s sentence,” Tastan said. “We’re happy on one hand, and sorry on the other.”

The court hearing lasted just a few minutes, said Polat.

“The judges came to the court hearing ready with their decision,” Polat said. “Their file was complete, and there was neither other evidence nor witnesses.”

Polat was hesitant to comment on whether the decision to convict the men of collecting private data without permission was because they are Christians. He did underline, however, that the court’s decision to fine the men was unjust, and that they plan to appeal it after the court issues an official written verdict.

“This was the court’s decision,” said Polat, “but we believe this is not fair. This decision is inconsistent with the law.”

 

Christianity on Trial

The initial charges in 2006 against Tastan and Topal were based on “a warning telephone call to the gendarme” claiming that some Christian missionaries were trying to form illegal groups in local schools and making insults against Turkishness, the military and Islam.

In March 2009 the Turkish Ministry of Justice issued a statement claiming that approval to try the two men’s case under the controversial Article 301came in response to the “original” statement by three young men that Topal and Tastan were conducting missionary activities in an effort to show that Islam was a primitive and fictitious religion that results in terrorism, and to portray Turks as a “cursed people.”

Two of the three witnesses, however, stated in court that they didn’t even know Topal and Tastan. The third witness never appeared in court. Prosecutors were unable to produce any evidence indicating the defendants described Islam in these terms. At the same time, they questioned their right to speak openly about Christianity with others.

Polat and his legal partners had based their defense on the premise that Turkey’s constitution grants all citizens freedom to choose, be educated in and communicate their religion, making missionary activities legal.

“This is the point that really needs to be understood,” Polat told Compass last year. “In Turkey, constitutionally speaking, it is not a crime to be a Christian or to disseminate the Christian faith. However, in reality there have been problems.”

The lawyer and the defendants said that prosecuting lawyers gave political dimensions to the case by rendering baseless accusations in a nationalistic light, claiming that missionary activities were carried out by imperialistic countries intending to harm Turkey.

Tastan and Topal became Christians more than 15 years ago and changed their religious identity from Muslim to Christian on their official ID cards.

Initially accompanied by heavy media hype, the case had been led by ultranationalist attorney Kemal Kerincsiz and a team of six other lawyers. Kerincsiz had filed or inspired dozens of Article 301 court cases against writers and intellectuals he accused of insulting the Turkish nation and Islam.

Because of Kerincsiz’s high-level national profile, the first few hearings drew several hundred young nationalist protestors surrounding the Silivri courthouse, under the eye of dozens of armed police. But the case has attracted almost no press attention since Kerincsiz was jailed in January 2008 as a suspect in the overarching conspiracy trials over Ergenekon, a “deep state” operation to destabilize the government led by a cabal of retired generals, politicians and other key figures. The lawyer is accused of an active role in the alleged Ergenekon plot to discredit and overthrow Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party government.

Ergenekon has been implicated in the cases of murdered priest Andreas Santoro, Armenian editor Hrant Dink, and the three Christians in Malatya: Necati Aydin, Ugur Yuksel and Tilmann Geske.

In a separate case, in March of 2009 Tastan and Topal were charged with “illegal collection of funds.” Each paid a fine of 600 Turkish lira (US$360) to a civil court in Istanbul. The verdict could not be appealed in the Turkish legal courts. This ruling referred to the men receiving church offerings without official permission from local authorities.

Report from Compass Direct News

Turkish Court Pushes to Close Malatya Murder Case

Judges reject request to investigate links to suspected masterminds.

MALATYA, Turkey, February 24 (CDN) — On Friday (Feb. 19) judges eager to wrap up the trial over the murder of three Christians here rejected plaintiff appeals to investigate the suspected masterminds behind the stabbing deaths.

At the 24th hearing regarding the 2007 murders of Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske in this city in southeastern Turkey, the prosecution demanded three life sentences without chance for parole for each defendant.

Judges and prosecutors pushed for a conclusion to the case that has lasted nearly three years. In the last few weeks the Istanbul prosecutors sent a police report to Malatya’s Third Criminal Court linking the murders to a larger “deep state” operation led by a cabal of retired generals, politicians and other key figures called Ergenekon. The judges, however, rejected plaintiffs’ requests that the Malatya court further probe into the possible links between the two operations.

In a 17-page statement, prosecutors detailed accusations against the five young defendants, Emre Gunaydin, Salih Gürler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker and Abuzer Yildirim, and demanded three consecutive life sentences for each of them if convicted. The five men are charged with murder, being part of a terrorist organization, holding citizens against their will and stealing.

The prosecutors’ recommended sentence is the maximum possible in the case. Plaintiff and defense lawyers are to present their rebuttals to the proposed punishment at the next hearing, scheduled for April 15.

“They requested the highest possible penalty, however, we are defeated in this case when we consider that these five guys are part of a bigger plan . . . and this incident occurred as part of this plan,” said plaintiff lawyer Murat Dincer in a press briefing after the hearing.

Dincer said the recommended sentence takes into account only the five young men and not the suspected high-level officials who planned the murder. He and his colleagues said bringing those behind the scenes to justice is still a possibility, and that therefore they would evaluate the proposed sentence and make their petition accordingly.

“The trial is important in the sense that we expected such a penalty, but we did not want them [prosecutors] to stop searching for connections with Ergenekon,” said plaintiff lawyer Erdal Dogan.

Over the last three years, plaintiff lawyers have presented volumes of evidence showing how the Malatya murders were just one operation in a series of many targeting the country’s Christian minorities in an effort to destabilize the current Islamic-leaning government.

On behalf of the team of plaintiff lawyers, Dogan told judges in court that research into a recent indictment over a stash of military artillery found on the property of a foundation in the Istanbul suburb of Poyrazkoy showed there were links to violent attacks against Christians. He cited the 2006 murder of Catholic priest Andreas Santoro in Trabzon, the kidnapping of a Syrian Orthodox priest in Mardin, the stabbing of a priest in Izmir and threats against the pastor of the Protestant church in Samsun all in the last three years.

The Poyrazkoy indictment took place within the context of the Ergenekon probes. The murder of the Armenian Christian editor of Agos in Istanbul three months before the April 18, 2007 Malatya murders has also been linked to the Ergenekon investigation.

Dogan speculated that the court decision to start bringing the trial to a close without further probes into Ergenekon links may have sprung from last week’s decision by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors to disqualify four prosecutors in Erzurum in a judicial power struggle over other investigations into the alleged clandestine operation.

“It may be that the prosecutors are nervous because of that,” said Dogan. “Because among those implicated in Malatya is an army commander, a gendarmerie commander, soldiers and professors, so it may have made them nervous in that sense. That’s why they want to drop it at this point.”

Plaintiff lawyers said that the latest decisions do not necessarily mean the end of investigation into the links between Ergenekon and the Malatya murders. If by the end of the Malatya murder case the Istanbul prosecutors have not outlined an action plan directing the court to pursue Ergenekon leads and the case is closed, plaintiff lawyers said they are ready to take the case to the Supreme Court of Appeals.

“But of course we wish those connections would be made here,” said Dogan.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Assailant in Street Attack in Turkey Ordered Released

Court ignores ‘religious hostility’ of Turk who held knife to Christian’s throat.

ISTANBUL, February 12 (CDN) — An Istanbul court has ordered the release of a jailed Turk who publicly threatened and held a knife to the throat of a Christian he attacked six months ago.

In a ruling on Wednesday (Feb. 10), the Kadikoy Seventh Court of First Instance convicted Yasin Karasu, 24, of making death threats and mounting an armed attack against Ismail Aydin. Shouting to attract passersby as he held a knife to Aydin’s throat on Aug. 3, Karasu had denounced the Christian as a “missionary dog” who had betrayed Turkey by leaving Islam and evangelizing others.

The crime is punishable by four years in prison, but Justice Tahsin Dogan ruled that Karasu should be released unconditionally, without serving the remainder of his sentence.

After the attack last August, the 48-year-old Aydin had declined to press charges against his assailant, who was taken into police custody at the scene. But state prosecutors charged Karasu under criminal statutes for making armed threats, obstructing another’s freedom, and attempted harm with a weapon.

He was then sent to prison for the duration of criminal investigations into the case.

After an initial hearing on Jan. 12, Karasu appeared in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district courthouse this week for a second trial hearing. Arriving in handcuffs from Istanbul’s Metris Prison where he has been incarcerated for the past six months, Karasu erupted in several emotional outbursts as he entered the courthouse with an escort of gendarmerie guards.

At the outset, the prisoner heatedly refused to accept the lawyer his father hired to represent him in court. After a guard removed his handcuffs before he entered the courtroom, Karasu took out of his pocket several handwritten pages, which he said he would submit in his own defense.

Under Turkish law, Karasu’s conviction should have left him with a four-year jail term for his death threats and armed attack on Aydin. But the prosecutor, applying a frequently used law of procedures, cited the defendant’s “respectful behavior, condition and manners in the courtroom in his favor” and declared that Karasu’s good conduct had earned him a one-sixth reduction (eight months) in his sentence.

Together with the six months Karasu has already been jailed, that reduced his four-year prison term to a remaining two years and 10 months.

Nevertheless, the court ruled for Karasu’s unconditional release. The Court of Appeal must approve this sentence, however, and his actual release then must be formally approved in writing by the Administrative Board of Penalties.

“It seems that the judge did not take into account at all that this crime was committed with religious hostility,” one member of the legal committee of Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches told Compass. “That, in my view, should have aggravated the crime and sentence.”

Human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, after reviewing Wednesday’s court record, agreed.

“This is also a crime against the freedom of religion,” Cengiz said. “This should be another factor to be taken into account, and the sentence should be increased accordingly.”

Karasu had taken Aydin hostage by grabbing him around the neck, holding a knife blade to his throat and forcing him along the street to a busy intersection in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. Within minutes both TV crews and police arrived at the scene, watching as Karasu wrapped Aydin’s head in a large Turkish flag and continued to taunt him as a traitor to the nation.

“I want to see him set free,” Aydin commented outside the courtroom before this week’s hearing. Aydin, who converted to Christianity 22 years ago, said he had forgiven Karasu.

Aydin said Karasu had made contact with him several times during the year previous to his attack, asking him questions about the Christian faith. He said Karasu, who was unemployed when he attacked him, had experienced emotional problems and depression while completing the last months of his military service.

Karasu’s father, who traveled from Erzurum to attend this week’s hearing, told Compass that he could not understand what had caused his son to launch such an attack against Aydin. Confirming that his son had received psychological treatment in the past, he declared his intention to take him back to Erzurum after his release, so that he could live at home and undergo more psychological therapy.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Moroccan Authorities Raid Bible Study, Arrest Christians

Order to detain 18 nationals, deport U.S. citizen apparently came from highest levels.

MARSEILLES, France, February 9 (CDN) — A large, military-led team of Moroccan authorities raided a Bible study in a small city southeast of Marrakech last week, arresting 18 Moroccans and deporting a U.S. citizen, area Christian leaders said.

Approximately 60 officers from the Moroccan security services on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 4) raided the home of a Christian in Amizmiz, a picturesque city of 10,000 mainly Berber people 56 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Marrakech. A church Bible study was in progress at the home with visitors from western and southern Morocco, the leaders said.

Five of the 18 people held for 14 hours were small children, two of them infants no more than 6 months old. The other small children ranged from 20 months to 4 years old, and also detained was the visiting 16-year-old nephew of one of the participants.

The Christian leaders said authorities interrogated participants in the Bible study for 14 hours. The authorities filmed the interrogations with digital video cameras and cell phones.

The leader of the Christian group, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the raiding party was unusually large. It included an accompaniment of 15 vehicles led by a colonel and two captains.

“It’s the first time in our current Moroccan church history that the Moroccan government used this size of a legion to attack a small Christian meeting,” he said. “All the time they kept repeating that this was ordered personally by the new Moroccan Justice Minister [Mohamed Naciri] and by the highest level General of the Gendarmerie [Housni Benslimane].”

Quoting a statement by the Interior Ministry, the state-run Maghreb Arabe Presse news agency reported that a “foreign missionary” had been arrested for trying to “spread evangelist creed in the Kingdom and locate new Moroccan nationals for recruitment.”

The statement added that the raid took place “following information on the organization of a secret meeting to initiate people into Christianity, which would shake Muslims’ faith and undermine the Kingdom’s religious values.”

The U.S. citizen, whose name has not been released, was deported immediately after interrogation. The Christian leaders said the visiting Moroccans were sent back to their homes in western and southern Morocco.

Authorities seized Bibles, books, two laptops, a digital camera and one cell phone, they said.

“I don’t think this number of Moroccan government forces was ever used even against Muslim fundamentalists,” the leader of the Christian group said.

Conflicting Codes

Overall, the North African country has a history of religious tolerance. Morocco’s constitution provides for freedom to practice one’s religion, but Article 220 of the Moroccan Penal Code criminalizes any attempt to induce a Muslim to convert to another religion.

In its 2009 international religious freedom report, the U.S. Department of State noted that on April 2, 2009, a Moroccan government spokesman asserted that freedom of religion does not include freedom to choose one’s faith.

“The fight against Christian proselytizing in accordance with law cannot be considered among human rights abuses,” the Moroccan government spokesman said, “for it is an action aimed at preventing attempts to undermine the country’s immutable religious values. The freedom of belief does not mean conversion to another religion.”

Morocco is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 18 of the covenant affirms the right to manifest one’s faith in worship, observance, practice or teaching.

The covenant also states, however, that “freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.”

In early December last year Moroccan police expelled five Christian foreigners for “attending a forbidden meeting,” according to an unnamed government official. The five men were involved in a training seminar for 17 Christians in northern Morocco.

“We were highly surprised that Morocco dared to arrest and expel us,” said one of the deported Christians, noting that only Christians were present at the meetings. “The police told us that we were holding a forbidden meeting, but we are friends just coming together for fellowship and for teaching each other. Is that forbidden in Morocco?”

The deportations were a serious violation of religious rights, the Christian said.

“The police came with 35 agents – 12 of them invaded the building, and the rest of the police surrounded the premises just to arrest 17 friends coming together for fellowship,” he said. “We were held in custody for one day and night, and we were interrogated for many hours, until 4:30 the next morning.”

On March 29, 2009, the Moroccan government announced that it had expelled five female Christians for attempting to “proselytize,” although sources said they were foreign visitors merely attending a Bible study with fellow Christians. The accused women were five of 23 tourists, expatriates and Moroccans arrested in Casablanca on March 28 during what the Interior Ministry called a “proselytizing” meeting involving Moroccan citizens.

Police seized numerous pieces of evangelistic “propaganda,” including Arabic books and videos. But a source told Compass that everyone in attendance was a Christian and that they had gathered merely for a Bible study, which he said falls within Morocco’s constitutional right of freedom to express one’s faith.

The authorities interrogated 12 others, 11 of them Moroccan citizens, for participating in the women’s Bible study in the apartment of a local Christian leader in Casablanca. They released them early the following morning, returning them home in unmarked police cars, according to the state department report.

“The authorities reportedly pressured the women to return to Islam, mocked their Christian faith, questioned why they left Islam to become Christians, and asked if there were other Christians in their families,” the report states.

A Christian who works in the country told Compass that Moroccan Christians do not see themselves as contradicting national values.

“Moroccan Christians are proud to be Moroccan and desire the freedom to be legally recognized by the government,” he said.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Court Seeks Help to Link Murders in Turkey to ‘Deep State’

Reports mount linking top gendarmerie officials to Malatya slaughter.

MALATYA, Turkey, November 17 (CDN) — Judges and prosecutors in the trial regarding the murder of three Christians in this southeastern city in Turkey on Friday (Nov. 13) renewed their request for help from the Istanbul High Criminal Court as reports mounted linking the slayings to top gendarmerie officials.

The Malatya court judges overseeing hearings on the murders of Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske requested that the Istanbul criminal court establish whether the case was linked to the controversial cabal of military, political and other influential figures, Ergenekon, which has allegedly been trying to overthrow the government by upsetting Turkey’s peace.

For the last two and a half years prosecuting lawyers have established the case that Emre Gunaydin, Salih Gurler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker and Abuzer Yildirim, who were caught at the murder scene on April 18, 2007, were not acting independently but were incited by Turkey’s “deep state,” an expression of which is Ergenekon. Seven months ago the Malatya court requested from prosecutors on the Ergenekon case at the Istanbul high court to examine whether the two cases were connected. They have not received a reply yet.

The court and various mainstream media have received informant letters with specific names linking the murders to top gendarmerie officials. Last month a Turkish newspaper received a list of payments the gendarmerie made to informants to physically follow and collect information on Christians in Malatya. Phone trees also show calls made from the murderers to two alleged “middle-men,” Huseyin Yelki and Bulent Varol Aral, gendarmerie officials and other nationalist figures in Malatya.

“We are expecting the Istanbul prosecutor to make a careful investigation and give us a response and attest to the connections the court has found,” said prosecuting attorney Erdal Dogan on Friday during a press briefing. “The actions of these men who are on trial were not independent, and from the beginning we believed they were organized by Ergenekon. Our theories have become more concrete, and we are expecting the Istanbul prosecutor to investigate these closely, establish the connections and give us a response.”

Lawyers said that informant letters, testimonies and other evidence have only confirmed their original suspicions. The most striking of these is that the local gendarmerie forces were following activities of Christians in Malatya in the months leading up to the murders and afterwards yet did not stop the young men from stabbing and slashing the three Christians to death.

“If you have been watching a small, tiny group so closely,” said lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, “how could it be possible that you disregard this murder? This is a legitimate question which requires ordinary intelligence.” 

Last month the head of Istanbul police intelligence, Ramazan Akyurek, was demoted amid allegations that he had neglected to investigate three Christian murder cases between 2006 and 2007. When Turkish news reporters asked Dogan whether prosecutors would make a request to investigate whether Akyurek played a greater part in the murders, he said that it was not out of the question.

The five young suspects were apprehended after Zirve Publishing Co. workers went to the publishing house to find out why the three Christian men were not answering their phones. Finding the door of the office locked and getting no answer, they called police. In a report prepared by Akyurek’s department, his staff claimed that the murderers were apprehended thanks to phone tapping – which attorney Dogan said is a lie.

“According to a report, they said that they had been listening to the murderers’ phones and following them, and that that’s how they found and arrested them,” said Dogan. “You know this is a lie. The five men were arrested haphazardly. We know that. We also know that the gendarmerie was in fact listening to their conversations, but there’s something interesting here: On the one hand they are listening to the criminals’ phones, but on the other they couldn’t thwart the crime.”

Prosecuting lawyers said that this makes both Akyurek’s department and the gendarmerie guilty of being accomplices to the crime, and that they should be tried along with the five young men.

“They should stand trial for not thwarting a crime and failing to perform their duties,” said Dogan. “They [gendarmerie and the police intelligence security] should be tried under Article 8 of the penal code as accomplices because they are connected. This is not a question of removing someone from his position. They should stand trial with the men who are now on trial.”

The lawyers expressed frustration at being able to see the bigger picture yet not having enough evidence to proceed, as well as with having to wait on the Istanbul prosecutor for more evidence.

“It is crystal clear,” said attorney Cengiz. “There is a much bigger agenda and much more complex connections. We convinced everyone, but we cannot do this beyond reasonable doubt; we can’t prove it. We are blocked, actually.”

Cengiz explained that as lawyers for the victims’ families, they are not in a position to collect evidence.

“We are heavily dependent on what the prosecutor is doing, and unfortunately they are not able to do much,” he said.

Cengiz said that although the case was complicated and the Malatya judges resisted their arguments at the outset of the hearings, now they agree with the prosecuting lawyers that there is a broader network behind the murders.

“Now they are very clear – they know what happened and what kind of connections there are, etcetera, but they are fighting against a dragon,” said Cengiz. “So they desperately sent this request to the prosecutor in Istanbul, hoping that it will be the Istanbul prosecutor who will create these links rather than them. It should be vice versa because they have all these details, but they are not ready for this confrontation.”

Cengiz explained that while the Malatya court has a better understanding of the case than the Istanbul prosecutors, the advantage of the Istanbul High Criminal Court is that it has the backing of the Justice Ministry and is better positioned to take on the powers that may be behind this and other murders. 

“They can’t take the responsibility because this is just a tiny court in the remote part of Turkey, so how can they confront the reality?” he said.

The next hearing is set for Dec. 25, and prosecutors expect that by then the 13th Istanbul High Criminal Court will have sent an answer about connections of the murders to Ergenekon. They are also expecting the prosecuting judge to demand all five of the young men be charged with “three times life imprisonment,” plus additional years for organizing the crime.

“In our estimation, until now in a bizarre way the accused are acting like they have been given assurances that they will be forgiven and will get off the hook,” Dogan commented on the comfortable demeanor of the five men in court and their denial that others were behind the murders. “In the last months we see a continuation of the attempts to wreak havoc and chaos and overthrow the government. So we think whoever is giving confidence to these guys is affecting them. It is obvious to us that there is a group actively doing this. That means they are still trying to create chaos.”

Last week Ergenekon prosecutors found a hit-list consisting of 10 prominent representatives of minority groups as well as subscribers to Armenian weekly newspaper Agos, whose editor-in-chief was murdered three months before the Christians in Malatya. Cengiz explained that Ergenekon members are obsessed with purging Turkey of non-Muslim elements and non-Turkish minorities, which they see as a threat to the state.  

“They were trying to create chaos in Turkey, and of course they were trying to send a clear message to members of non-Muslim groups that they are not wanted in Turkey,” said Cengiz of the way the three Christians in Malatya were murdered. “They did it in a horrendous, barbaric way. This was also part of the message. Everything was planned but not by them, by other people. They are just puppets.”

Further Evidence of Cabal

This week Turkish news magazine Yeni Aktuel published a five-page article with pictures chronicling the “anti-terrorist” activities of a counter-guerilla team leader identified only by his initials, K.T.

In the article, K.T. described how for years he and his team pursued and killed members of the outlawed Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK). Anti-guerilla activities in Turkey are paramilitary efforts managed by the “deep state.”

In K.T.’s account, he claimed that during his time in Malatya he met with members of an ultra-nationalist group who talked about murdering Hrant Dink, editor of Agos. Also during that time, members of the group spoke about how those who distributed Bibles in Malatya had to be “punished.”

One of the members of this group was a high school teacher called “O.” The teacher said that he arranged to be out of town before the Malatya murders, because police were following him and he wanted to make sure that they could not connect him to the Malatya murders.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Turkish Police Official Axed amid Allegations in Murders

Head of intelligence allegedly hid evidence, failed to prevent slaying of Christians.

MALATYA, Turkey, October 22 (CDN) — The head of Turkey’s police intelligence department was removed on Friday (Oct. 16) amid allegations that he failed to prevent the murder of the Christian editor of an Armenian weekly and the slayings of three Christians in this city in southeastern Turkey.

Ramazan Akyurek is also accused of withholding evidence in those cases and improperly investigating the murder of a Catholic priest in 2006.

After a Malatya trial hearing on Friday, prosecution lawyers in the case commended the removal of Akyurek for negligence but said it came too late. Akyurek has been placed in a different position within police headquarters in Ankara.

Prior to the January 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, editor of the Armenian weekly Agos, Akyurek allegedly received a report about the orchestrated plan to kill him. That clearly implied that Akyurek was one of the masterminds behind the murder, according to Erdal Dogan, one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Malatya case.

While heading the investigation of the Dink murder, Aykurek reportedly not only witheld intelligence but also tried to affect the outcome of the trial, claiming in his investigation report that a group of “friends” planned to kill Dink because he offended Turkey.

“This is a disaster,” Dogan said. “The same happened with the Malatya massacre. “We know he had information on all the developments of the massacre, but he didn’t act on it. He tried to cover it up. We know that they were following the movements of the killers.”

Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske were bound hand and foot, tortured and then slain with knives at the Zirve Publishing Co. in April 2007. Dogan said that had Zirve staff members not suspected that something was wrong and called police, the five young men who were caught at the scene of the crime most likely would not have been apprehended.

“It’s difficult to know to what extent this character affected the investigations during that time,” Dogan said. “This is why the fact that they took him from his position was important, but they removed him late; they removed him very late.”

Akyurek was head of police in the city of Trabzon in 2006 when Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was killed. It was under his auspices that a young man was arrested and imprisoned for the murders without investigation into who was behind the murder, according to Dogan.

In the same year, Akyurek was promoted to head Turkey’s police intelligence unit.

“Even though Aykurek was incompetent as a police head and covered up crimes, he became the head of intelligence with access to all of Turkey’s intelligence,” Dogan said.

More Evidence Sees Light

Akyurek was fired about a week after Turkish press received leaked documents showing payments the Malatya gendarmerie made in exchange for intelligence on missionary activities between March 2007 and November 2008. The amounts totaled nearly 10,000 Turkish lira (US$6,840).

At Friday’s hearing the Malatya court heard the testimony of Murat Gokturk, a former petty officer in the Malatya intelligence department at the time of the murders. Gokturk had made contact with Huseyin Yelki, a Christian volunteer at Zirve who is one of the suspects in the murders because of his heavy involvement with gendarmerie in the months leading up to and directly after the slayings.

Gokturk testified that he contacted Yelki and requested a New Testament in Arabic so he could learn the language better, as he has an Arabic heritage. He claimed that when he contacted Yelki from his gendarmerie office, he and the intelligence department were not following missionary activities.

“Missionary activities are legal,” said Gokturk. “This is a religious and conscience right. It’s not a crime.”

Prosecuting lawyers asked that the judges record Gokturk’s statement that missionary activities are legal. They later explained that since all other evidence shows that officials did spy on missionaries in Malatya, such a statement showed they were aware that they were doing so in violation of their legal jurisdiction.

“We questioned the witness [Gokturk], but he tried to hide the truth either by saying, ‘I don’t remember,’ or by lying,” said Dogan. “But evidence shows that he and Huseyin Yelki had a very close relationship and information exchange, and it’s obvious that this was not a simple information exchange. They met many, many times.”

The European Union Commission report on Turkey’s progress in 2009 was also published last week. Under the section on democracy and the rule of law, the report noted that high-profile cases such as the Malatya and Dink trials, which are connected to the alleged criminal network Ergenekon, raised concerns about the quality of investigations. The report noted a need “to improve the working relationship between the police and the gendarmerie on the one hand and the judiciary on the other.”

Concerning freedom of religion, the report noted that missionaries are widely perceived as a threat to the integrity of Turkey and Islam. It also pointed out that the Ministry of Justice allowed judicial proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code – which criminalizes “insulting Turkishness” – in the case of Turkish Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal for sharing their faith with others.

This last case has also been linked to the Ergenekon cabal believed to have masterminded the Santoro, Dink and Malatya murders. It has continued for three years with no resolution.

“It’s finally clear that there is a connection between Santoro, Dink and Malatya and everyone is talking that way,” said Dogan, noting how the prosecuting lawyers in the cases as well as the media perceive the link. “It is now obvious that these three crimes came from the same center.”

The Malatya court is still waiting for an answer from the Ergenekon judges about whether the murder of the three Christians will be joined into the the latter case, under which more than 100 former military, political figures, journalists and others have been arrested.

Dogan, however, said that whether the Malatya case is connected with the Ergenekon case is now secondary, and that it is probably better for the Malatya trial to stay separate to determine what really happened.

“It’s enough for me that this picture is clear,” said Dogan of the link between the cases and Ergenekon. “There is no doubt for me. If they connect them or not it doesn’t matter. Because when the court case goes there, Ergenekon is so complicated that the Malatya case could get lost in it.”

The next hearing of the Malatya trial is set for Nov. 13.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Lawyer Calls Turkish Christians’ Trial a ‘Scandal’

Evidence still absent in case for ‘insulting Turkishness and Islam.’

SILIVRI, Turkey, October 16 (CDN) — After three prosecution witnesses testified yesterday that they didn’t even know two Christians on trial for “insulting Turkishness and Islam,” a defense lawyer called the trial a “scandal.”

Speaking after yesterday’s hearing in the drawn-out trial, defense attorney Haydar Polat said the case’s initial acceptance by a state prosecutor in northwestern Turkey was based only on a written accusation from the local gendarmerie headquarters unaccompanied by any documentation.

“It’s a scandal,” Polat said. “It was a plot, a planned one, but a very unsuccessful plot, as there is no evidence.”

Turkish Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal were arrested in October 2006; after a two-day investigation they were charged with allegedly slandering Turkishness and Islam while talking about their faith with three young men in Silivri, an hour’s drive west of Istanbul.

Even the three prosecution witnesses who appeared to testify at Thursday’s (Oct. 15) hearing failed to produce any evidence whatsoever against Tastan and Topal, who could be jailed for up to two years if convicted on three separate charges.

Yesterday’s three witnesses, all employed as office personnel for various court departments in Istanbul, testified that they had never met or heard of the two Christians on trial. The two court employees who had requested New Testaments testified that they had initiated the request themselves.

The first witness, a bailiff in a Petty Offenses Court in Istanbul for the past 28 years, declared he did not know the defendants or anyone else in the courtroom.

But he admitted that he had responded to a newspaper ad about 10 years ago to request a free New Testament. After telephoning the number to give his address, he said, the book arrived in the mail and is still in his home.

He also said he had never heard of the church mentioned in the indictment, although he had once gone to a wedding in a church in Istanbul’s Balikpazari district, where a large Armenian Orthodox church is located.

“This is the extent of what I know about this subject,” he concluded.

Fidgeting nervously, a second witness stated, “I am not at all acquainted with the defendants, nor do I know any of these participants. I was not a witness to any one of the matters in the indictment. I just go back and forth to my work at the Istanbul State Prosecutors’ office.”

The third person to testify reiterated that he also had no acquaintance with the defendants or anyone in the courtroom. But he stated under questioning that he had entered a website on the Internet some five or six years ago that offered a free New Testament.

“I don’t know or remember the website’s name or contents,” the witness said, “but after checking the box I was asked for some of my identity details, birth date, job, cell phone – I don’t remember exactly what.”

Noting that many shops and markets asked for the same kind of information, the witness said, “I don’t see any harm in that,” adding that he would not be an open person if he tried to hide all his personal details.

For the next hearing set for Jan. 28, 2010, the court has repeated its summons to three more prosecution witnesses who failed to appear yesterday: a woman employed in Istanbul’s security police headquarters and two armed forces personnel whose whereabouts had not yet been confirmed by the population bureau.

Case ‘Demands Acquittal’

Polat said after the hearing that even though the Justice Ministry gave permission in February for the case to continue under Turkey’s controversial Article 301, a loosely-defined law that criminalizes insulting the Turkish nation, “in my opinion the documents gathered in the file demand an acquittal.”

“There is no information, no document, no details, nothing,” Polat said. “There is just a video, showing the named people together, but what they are saying cannot be heard. It was shot in an open area, not a secret place, and there is no indication it was under any pressure.”

But prosecution lawyer Murat Inan told Compass, “Of course there is evidence. That’s why the Justice Ministry continued the case. This is a large ‘orgut’ [a term connoting an illegal and armed organization], and they need to be stopped from doing this propaganda here.”

At the close of the hearing, Inan told the court that there were missing issues concerning the judicial legality and activities of the “Bible research center” linked with the defendants that needed to be examined and exposed.

Turkish press were conspicuously absent at yesterday’s hearing, and except for one representative of the Turkish Protestant churches, there were no observers present.

The first seven hearings in the trial had been mobbed by dozens of TV and print journalists, focused on ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, who led a seven-member legal team for the prosecution.

But since the January 2008 jailing of Kerincsiz and Sevgi Erenerol, who had accompanied him to all the Silivri trials, Turkish media interest in the case has dwindled. The two are alleged co-conspirators in the massive Ergenekon cabal accused of planning to overthrow the Turkish government.

This week the European Commission’s new “Turkey 2009 Progress Report” spelled out concerns about the problems of Turkey’s non-Muslim communities.

“Missionaries are widely perceived as a threat to the integrity of the country and to the Muslim religion,” the Oct. 14 report stated. “Further efforts are needed to create an environment conducive to full respect of freedom of religion in particular.”

In specific reference to Tastan and Topal’s case, the report noted: “A court case against two missionaries in Silivri continued; it was also expanded after the Ministry of Justice allowed judicial proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code.”

The Turkish constitution guarantees freedom of religion to all its citizens, and the nation’s legal codes specifically protect missionary activities.

“I trust our laws on this. But psychologically, our judges and prosecutors are not ready to implement this yet,” Polat said. “They look at Christian missionaries from their own viewpoint; they aren’t able to look at them in a balanced way.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

TURKEY: MURDER DEFENDANT AGAIN ADMITS PERJURY

Prosecutors suspect he’s protecting ‘masterminds’ of slaying of three Christians in Malatya.

ISTANBUL, August 25 (Compass Direct News) – Turkish murder suspect Emre Gunaydin admitted in court last week that he had again committed perjury in the trial over the savage murders of three Christians in southeast Turkey.

Gunaydin, 21, faced off in Malatya’s Third Criminal Court on Friday (Aug. 21) with Varol Bulent Aral, whom he had named as one of the instigators of the attack at Zirve Publishing Co.’s Malatya office in a previous disposition before state prosecutors. Gunaydin, the alleged ringleader of the murderers, told the court that he had lied in a previous disposition before state prosecutors by implicating Aral.

“I named Varol Bulent Aral to reduce the sentence,” Gunaydin said under questioning.

His admission came after Aral testified at length, painting an elaborate scenario of himself as a key player in the “Ergenekon” conspiracy – said to include top level political and security officials, among others – suspected of orchestrating the 2007 Malatya attack with Gunaydin and four other defendants.

“Varol Bulent Aral has no connection with these events,” Gunaydin insisted. “He is explaining things that he has imagined. There was not any threat against me, nor any instigator.”

Gunaydin initially failed to appear at Friday’s hearing where Aral was expected to testify, sending a note to the court that he was feeling unwell. But the judge abruptly announced a short court recess and ordered Gunaydin brought immediately from prison to the courtroom.

At a hearing three months ago, Gunaydin retracted similar allegations he had made against Huseyin Yelki, a former volunteer at the Christian publishing house where Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske were bound hand and foot, tortured and then slain with knives.

Jailed for three months on the basis of Gunaydin’s allegations, Yelki was finally brought to testify at the May 22 hearing.

“Huseyin Yelki is not guilty. He’s in prison for nothing,” Gunaydin told the court after Yelki testified. When questioned why he previously had implicated Yelki, Gunaydin said, “I did it to lessen my punishment. That’s why I said he was a missionary.”

Despite glaring discrepancies in his testimony, Yelki was released for lack of evidence. Aral was also ordered released for insufficient evidence, although he remains jailed in the Adiyaman Prison on unrelated criminal charges.

Plaintiff lawyers have expressed skepticism about Gunaydin’s two retractions, questioning whether he has been pressured to change his testimony in order to shield the actual instigators of the plot. They also remain unconvinced that Aral and Yelki were not collaborators in the attack.

Prosecution Failures

“An investigation does not just consist of claims, it must consist of proofs,” plaintiff lawyer Ali Koc told journalists on the courthouse steps after last week’s hearing. “One of the underlying missing elements of the Zirve Publishing trial in Malatya stems from the failure to pursue the investigation with sufficient objectivity, depth and careful attention.”

The only reason Aral and Yelki were charged in the case, the attorney noted, was because one of the defendants claimed they were accomplices. Koc stressed it was “the duty of the state and the judiciary to uncover those responsible for this event – the instigators, and the climate in which they emerged.”

He also declared that Aral should be investigated for his relations with intelligence officials, which he hoped would expose new evidence.

“If the Malatya case is not joined with the Ergenekon trial, then we’re probably looking at a verdict against the killers within the next three to five court hearings,” plaintiff lawyer Erdal Dogan said. “But I have hope – I hope for merging it with the Ergenekon case, in order to uncover the perpetrators behind the scenes.”

After two failed summons, Burcu Polat also appeared to testify at the Aug. 21 hearing. Now 18, Polat was Gunaydin’s girlfriend at the time of the murders. She stated that she had used two different cell phones in the weeks previous to the murders. Both telephones were registered in the name of her father, Ruhi Polat, a provincial council member of the Nationalist Movement Party previously called to testify at the trial.

The court summoned intelligence officer Murat Gokturk from the Malatya gendarmerie headquarters to appear at the next hearing, set for Oct. 16. Yelki had contacted Gokturk frequently by telephone in the weeks preceding the murders.

Detailed Informant Letter

Two months ago, an informant in the military intelligence division of the Malatya gendarmerie headquarters sent an extremely detailed report to state prosecutors regarding what Turkish media have dubbed the “Malatya massacre.”

The two-page letter fingered former Col. Mehmet Ulger, gendarmerie commander of Malatya province at the time of the murders, as a key instigator within the murder plot.

With precise, documented details, the report outlined Ulger’s targeting of the Malatya Christians and their activities during the weeks surrounding the attack, including a secret briefing for selected officials, unregistered meetings and the tapping of gendarmerie personnel named for specific assignments at various stages.

At the actual day and hour of the killings, the report said, Ulger received a telephone call from his commander while he was in a furniture shop in the city center. Ulger immediately promised to go to the scene, taking two sergeant majors and an official car, and arriving just as the police teams pulled up.

“The event had just happened, and the police teams had not yet gone to the scene, and Mehmet Ulger’s superiors informed him about it,” the report noted.

The letter goes on to describe frequent visits Inonu University professor Ruhi Abat made to Ulger’s office, where the colonel had specifically ordered his subordinates to never record Abat’s visits in the official record book.

Although Ulger and Abat testified on April 13 that they had sponsored a seminar regarding missionary activities for gendarmerie personnel, the informant declared it could be easily proved that such a seminar had never been held.

The informant claimed that 40,000 Turkish lira (US$30,800 at the time) was paid out during 2007 by Malatya’s gendarmerie intelligence staff “solely to direct close surveillance on missionary activities.” Instead of using the funds to help “break apart illegal organizations or recover a lot of drugs,” he said, a large portion of the money was handed over to Abat, he said.

The informant’s letter was sent simultaneously to Malatya Prosecutor Seref Gurkan and State Prosecutor Zekeriya Oz, who heads the Ergenekon investigation in Istanbul.

The anonymous informant claimed he had much more information that he could not pass along safely without revealing his own identity.

“Because I regret that I was involved myself in some of this, I am sending this letter to both prosecutors,” he wrote. “I hope that I am being helpful in solving this dark event.” He enclosed a CD of Ulger’s 2007 briefing as well as a list of the people whose telephones were being tapped.

It is not known how seriously the latest informant’s letter is being taken by the Malatya prosecutors.

“But we are seeing the continuation of a long chain of information coming out,” plaintiff lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz commented. “We have at least achieved something in the eyes of the Turkish public, because everyone is now convinced that it was not just these five young men who planned this; there were much larger and more serious forces behind the scenes.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

TURKEY: ‘DEEP STATE’ SUSPECTED OF SILENCING WITNESSES

Two key figures in Malatya murder trial again fail to show despite court orders.

MALATYA, Turkey, July 21 (Compass Direct News) – Under the pretext of recovering from medical treatment he received earlier this month, a key suspect in the murders of three Christians in southeast Turkey dodged court for the second time, further stalling the legal process, prosecuting attorneys said.

Journalist Varol Bulent Aral, one of the suspected “middlemen” who allegedly incited five young men to brutally murder Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske at the Zirve Publishing Co. in Malatya two years ago, again failed to show at a hearing on Friday (July 17).

The three Christians were bound and tortured before they were murdered on April 18, 2007 at the Christian publishing house, where they worked. Suspects Salih Guler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker, Abuzer Yildirim and alleged ring-leader Emre Gunaydin were caught trying to escape from the scene of the crime.

Aral was admitted for mental health treatment a few days after the last hearing in June and was released from the Adiyaman penitentiary hospital on July 8. The gendarmerie, however, failed to produce him in court on Friday (July 17) claiming that he was recovering from treatment.

Prosecuting attorneys pointed out that the reason the gendarmerie did not bring him to the June hearing from the penitentiary in Adana, nearly 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Malatya, was due to lack of funds – yet the gendarmerie seemed to have no trouble finding funds to take him for treatment in Adiyaman, which is the same distance from Adana as is Malatya.

“Last time [in June] they said they couldn’t bring him because of insufficient funds,” said prosecuting lawyer Erdal Dogan. “This is unacceptable… now in the same way they make excuses, saying they took him to the hospital. It seems they are mocking us, especially since previous health reports said that he was in good health.”

Prosecuting attorneys also pointed out that it was suspicious that Aral was admitted to the hospital only days after a court order that he appear at the July 17 hearing.

“It seems to us that they are trying to silence him by making him evade court,” said prosecuting attorney Dogan of the “deep state” officials that he and his colleagues believe masterminded the murders of the three Christians. “I truly hope that is not the case.”

Charged with high-security cases, the gendarmerie are holding Aral, but some believe the gendarmerie and its intelligence services are connected with Turkey’s “deep state.”

In the last year, nearly 150 people have been arrested in Turkey under suspicion of being connected to a cabal of retired generals and politicians called Ergenekon, accused of trying to overthrow Turkey’s Islamic-leaning but secular government. Some key figures of the Ergenekon case are believed to be behind the Malatya slayings and the murders of Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, killed in the Black Sea coastal town of Trabzon in February 2006, and Armenian Christian editor Hrant Dink, who was shot in front of the weekly Agos three months before the slaughter in Malatya.

The Malatya and Ergenekon prosecutors, however, are still researching links between the murders and have yet to try them jointly.

Aral has been arrested in conjunction with both cases. In a previous statement, he had complained that retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, who has also been arrested in connection to Ergenekon, had threatened him about testifying. Aral testified to the Ergenekon case state judges privately in May, but the content of his testimony has not been publicized.

Judges have found the phone numbers of ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz and Sevgi Erenerol, spokesperson for the Turkish Orthodox Church – a Turkish nationalist denomination – in Aral’s personal phone book. Both figures are accused of playing leading roles in Ergenekon and spearheaded prosecution of Christians Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal for speaking to people about their faith.

While in prison, alleged ring-leader Gunaydin testified to the state prosecutor that Aral had contacted him and instructed him to carry out the murders. Gunaydin had also testified that Huseyin Yelki, who worked as a volunteer at the Zirve office, had planned details of the crime with him.

Yelki is still obligated to appear at every court hearing and continues to be a suspected middleman. Thus far, however, his testimony has yielded no clear indication of his role.

Burcu Polat, Gunaydin’s girlfriend, also failed to appear in court on Friday, telling police that she was not ready because she is a student in Balikesir, in northwest Turkey. The prosecution noted in court that universities are not in session and requested that the court find her guilty of not fulfilling her duty to appear in court.

The court again has ordered Aral and Polat to appear in court at the next hearing on Aug. 21.

Report from Compass Direct News