PAKISTAN: ELDERLY CHRISTIAN KILLED IN AXE MURDER

Suspects haven’t been charged; politicians shielding them from prosecution.

ISTANBUL, September 4 (Compass Direct News) – Four Pakistani Muslims killed an elderly woman with an axe over a dispute with her husband, who has been unable to prosecute them due to his low social status as a Christian.

Case workers said the alleged culprits targeted the couple for theft and later murder because they believed Pakistan’s legal system would not prosecute them for murdering Christians. The suspects’ connections to mafia and national politicians further emboldened them, they said.

“The Muslims assume the Christians are sheep and don’t have any weight,” said Sohail Johnson, case worker and chief coordinator of Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan (SLMP), a Non-Governmental Organization that supports Christian prisoners throughout the Punjab province. “The culprits thought, ‘[The Christians] have no voice. Nothing will happen if we do something,’” he said.

Noban Bibi, 65, was killed on July 2 in Pakistan’s eastern Kasur province in the village of Khraper.

The dispute that led to her murder started in January, when two men stole money and gold items from the couple.

According to a First Instance Report, Yaqoob Shareef and Hadayat Ali broke into the house of Dara Masih, 85, while his wife was away in Lahore. They stole gold ornaments and 15,000 Pakistan rupees (US$200).

Masih demanded they return the stolen goods or he would prosecute them. The alleged culprits then began threatening to kill him.

On July 2 at 2:30 a.m. Shareef, Ali, and two unknown persons entered their house and killed Bibi with a pickaxe.

An autopsy obtained by Compass said Bibi had multiple lacerations on her head, some nearly four inches long.

Johnson of SLMP said the alleged culprits believed they wouldn’t be prosecuted due to their connections to politicians and mafia.

Shareef, 36, and Ali, in his late 20s, are members of a criminal organization and have connections with local and national politicians that they are using to leverage the criminal justice system, said Shazhad Kamran, an SLMP case worker.

“In Pakistan, politicians always need criminals to assert their power in an area,” Kamran said. “They always depend on criminals, and criminals depend on politicians to save them.”

 

Bribery and ‘Dissimulation’

Masih nevertheless registered the murder with the local police. He could not convince local police officer Muhammad Akram to arrest Shareef and Ali, according to an SLMP report, because Akram received a bribe requiring him to threaten Masih to drop charges against them.

Masih then took the case to a district police officer in Kasur, who arrested Ali and Sharif. The two suspects, however, have not been formally prosecuted.

When the SLMP’s Johnson and Kamran approached Sub-Inspector Aslam Pistooly and Investigation Officer Malik Mansab Ali on Aug. 2, Pistooly claimed the two suspects were not guilty. To prove this, he said the accused would swear an oath of innocence in front of prominent Muslims at a mosque, the report said.

Johnson and Kamran refused the offer for the suspects to do so, stating that swearing an oath at a mosque is not a part of Pakistani criminal investigation proceedings.

Pistooly then became angry and told Johnson and Kamran, “If you are not satisfied that Muslims will go into the mosque and swear they are innocent, then if you can go into the church, put your hand on the Bible, and swear they are guilty, then I will make legal action against him,” according to Johnson.

Speaking by telephone from Kasum, Investigation Officer Ali, who was at the Aug. 2 meeting, said swearing an oath in a mosque as proof of innocence is illegal under Pakistani criminal law. Asked if Pistooly had asked the culprits to testify in a mosque, he told Compass he could not confirm it.

“I have not compelled any person to swear an oath in a mosque, and Pakistani law does not permit it,” he said through a translator.

The SLMP case workers said the Muslim suspects wanted to swear an oath at the mosque to take advantage of an Islamic tradition that allows accused men to give false testimony when under threat.

Known as Al Taqiyya (dissimulation), this concept allows Muslims to conceal the truth at a time of danger to save themselves from physical or mental injury. In some traditions, Al Taqiyya can only be used when one is wrongfully accused.

On Aug. 4 Punjab Minister for Human Rights and Minority Affairs Kamran Michael transferred the case from the district police office to the Karsur superintendent of police.

The SLMP case workers met with Kasur Superintendent of Police Rana Shahid Ahmed on Aug. 18. In their first meeting he was uncooperative and pressured Masih to drop all charges against the two suspects, the report said.

Johnson said he believes justice will not come easily for Masih because the case has become an issue of pride for local Muslims. Members of Parliament are supporting the alleged criminals and putting pressure on police to find them innocent, he said, “just to save the skin of Muslims.”

The SLMP is now trying to move the investigation to the Criminal Investigation Agency. It will first file a complaint in a lower criminal court against the alleged culprits and police for not registering the case.

Kasur is an agricultural city located in the Punjab province with a long Islamic history. The area contains radical conservative Muslim elements, such as members of Jamaat-Ud-Dawa, a Pakistani charity that the U.S. State Department designated a terrorist organization in 2006.

In recent years Christians in Kasur have faced charges of blasphemy against Islam, torture and forced conversion.

In July 2007 Catholic prisoner Dil Awaiz was tortured, barred from teaching Bible classes to fellow Christian prisoners and placed in solitary confinement. He was released in April this year.

Human Rights and Minority Affairs Minister Michael spoke to Christians in Kanganpur, 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Kasur, on Friday (Aug. 29). He said the government was taking every step to protect minority rights, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan.  

Report from Compass Direct News

TURKEY: MALATYA MURDERS LINKED TO POLITICAL CONSPIRACY

Crime scene video sobers courtroom; accused killers either grin or grow sick.

MALATYA, Turkey, August 22 (Compass Direct News) – The five young Turkish men accused of torturing and killing three Christians in Malatya last year may have been incited by members of a vast political conspiracy allegedly responsible for multiple murders in recent years.

The 10th hearing on the murder of three Christians at a publishing house in southeast Turkey 16 months ago took place yesterday (Aug. 21) at the Malatya Third Criminal Court. Plaintiff attorneys requested the case be integrated with an investigation into Ergenekon, an ultranationalist cabal of retired generals, politicians, journalists and mafia members under investigation for conspiracy in various murders.

In January police uncovered and started arresting members of Ergenekon. A criminal investigation has linked them to high-profile attacks, murders and plans to engineer domestic chaos and ultimately overthrow the government.

Two Turkish Christians, Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, and a German, Tilmann Geske, were brutally tortured and killed on April 18, 2007 in the southeastern Turkish city of Malatya.

Evidence suggests Emre Gunaydin, the suspected ringleader of the murderers, was in contact with at least two people connected to Ergenekon: a retired brigadier general and a journalist. The latter, Varol Bulent Aral, told Gunaydin he saw a connection between missionaries and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) terrorist organization.

At yesterday’s hearing, presiding Judge Eray Gurtekin asked Gunaydin if he knew a former general and a political leader indicted in Ergenekon.

Gurtekin showed Gunaydin a note he had written last year while recovering in hospital from injuries he sustained after jumping out a third-story window while trying to escape police after the murder. His note said, “Don’t tell Levent.”

When the judge asked who this was, Gunaydin replied that he didn’t remember. Pressing further, Gurtekin asked him if he knew Levent Ersoz, a retired brigadier general indicted in the alleged Ergenekon conspiracy, or Levent Temiz, former head of the ultranationalist Ulku Ocaklari youth organization.

Gunaydin said he didn’t know the two men. Metin Dogan, a witness at the last hearing, said he and Gunaydin were involved in Ulku Ocaklari together. Gunaydin has denied knowing Dogan or having any involvement in the group.

Neither the widows of Aydin and Geske nor parents of Yuksel attended yesterday’s hearing. The martyred Christians left behind five children and Yuksel’s fiancée.

On the morning of the trial, Zaman national daily reported on further connections between the Malatya killings and Ergenekon. Gunaydin had been in contact with local journalist Aral, who had connections with Ergenekon and was called as a witness for the July 4 hearing.

Aral was arrested in another Turkish city while in possession of a Kalashnikov assault rifle. A week before the three Christians were killed in 2007, Gunaydin visited Aral in prison.

In January Malatya police found Aral’s diary, containing contact information for ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, who was indicted in the Ergenekon affair. Previously Kerincsiz had pressed charges against two Turkish Christians for “insulting Islam” and charged Armenian journalist Hrant Dink with insulting Turkishness. Dink was assassinated in January 2007.

Gunaydin said in a statement that Aral told him that there was a connection between the PKK and foreign missionaries. The goal of Christian missionary work in Turkey, Aral said, was to destroy the motherland.

“I asked him if someone shouldn’t stop this,” Gunaydin said. “He told me to get up and stop this. When I asked him how this will be done, he said, ‘We will provide state support.’”

 

Graphic Footage

Possible evidence of such state support for the murders was shown at the most recent hearing, when plaintiff lawyers showed police video footage of the crime scene taken hours after the murder on April 18.

The footage suggests someone tampered with evidence at the crime scene. According to the video, a handgun found at the crime scene was too large to fit into its gun box, indicating weapons had been swapped.

“This shows there is someone protecting these suspects,” said plaintiff attorney Murat Dincer. “If someone in the investigation changed the guns, then there is another force behind the scenes.”

Police could be overheard in the audio track arguing whether the guns were the same or not. Dincer requested this footage be replayed so the court could hear the police having the argument. The court has requested an expert witness to testify about the guns for the next hearing.

The court has not allowed release of any copies of this footage, and even attorneys were allowed to watch it only under supervision.

The hearing produced emotional moments for the victims’ acquaintances. Close-up shots of the victims showed their bodies mutilated and lying in pools of their own blood.

While some in the court teared up at the close-ups of the victims, suspects Gunaydin and Salih Gurler were seen grinning at times during the display of the footage.

Some of the five suspects looked away from the video during the gruesome scenes. The judge then ordered them to keep watching: “It’s because of you we are watching this. Look at it.”

Defendant Abuzer Yildirim turned around and told the judge he could not continue to watch because his stomach couldn’t handle it.

 

Absent Witnesses

Only one of eight witnesses summoned to testify attended yesterday’s hearing. Huseyin Yelki, 34, testified he was working part-time at Zirve’s Malatya office when Gunaydin and two other men visited there, about a month or six weeks before the murders, he recalled.

Gunaydin introduced himself, saying he wanted to meet Necati Aydin. But when Yelki telephoned Aydin and learned he would be coming to the office an hour later, the three men left. Yelki, who walks with a cane, said he never saw them again and could not remember their faces.

According to the murder suspects’ testimonies, Gunaydin had told them that it would be easy to get information from a man with a lame leg who worked at the Zirve office.

Despite previous court orders for police to track down and force three of the witnesses to appear, the court was informed that no current addresses had been located for any of the seven absent witnesses.

 

Ergenekon Connection

The court has requested the file on the Ergenekon investigation.

After the hearing, attorney Ozkan Yucel said the plaintiff team has requested the entire indictment file from the Ergenekon case in Istanbul on a DVD. The next hearing will be on Sept. 12.

There has been a wave of attacks and threats against Christians across Turkey in recent years, and documents suggest these events are related.

In the first Malatya hearing in November, plaintiff attorneys presented a surprise demand to broaden the prosecution from an isolated case of terrorism to the criminal code statutes against religious “genocide.”

In a January hearing, formal requests to remove 16 files of information about the religious activities of the three Christians and to charge the perpetrators with “religious genocide” were denied.

Confiscated Ergenekon files show the group apparently tracked even the smallest actions of Christians in Turkey. A Jan. 7, 2005 statement made cryptic mention of church members in Izmir, Mersin, and Trabzon: “Those who have recently accepted Christianity show increasing devotion to their own rules,” the file said, according to Radikal national daily on Aug. 14.

Members of those churches have been attacked or killed in following years. In February 2006 a youth shot and killed Father Andrea Santoro in the Santa Maria Church in Trabzon. The same year, a 19-year-old man stabbed Father Adriano Franchini in Izmir.

Although yesterday’s hearing avoided the theatrics of the previous hearing on July 4, when defense attorneys tried to link Malatya’s Christian missionaries with the PKK, there was one hot outburst when a defense attorney asked why there were so many foreigners living in Malatya. The plaintiff attorneys then rose to their feet in protest, declaring the question irrelevant to the case.

Plaintiff lawyer Ozkan Yucel spoke to the Turkish press outside the courthouse after the hearing. He said the plaintiff lawyers wanted the Ergenekon file to find a relationship between the Malatya and Ergenekon investigations and possibly combine them.

“I am of the opinion this will be combined with Ergenekon investigation,” he said. “We may request they be combined at the next hearing.”  

Report from Compass Direct News