Several thousand people marched on Saturday January 7 in Paris, between the Gare du Nord and Place de la République, to commemorate the assassination of three leading activists on the night of January 9 to 10, 2013, rue La Fayette, in the 10e district of Paris. This demonstration, which is held annually, was all the more attended as three new assassinations of Kurdish militants took place on the morning of December 23, rue d’Enghien (10e district), at the Kurdish Cultural Center Ahmet-Kaya.
A demonstration of several hundred people also took place in Marseille. Supervised by the omnipresent security service of the Democratic Center of the Kurds of France, the Parisian demonstration did not give rise to any overflow, unlike the demonstrations at the end of December after the massacre in the rue d’Enghien.
Like every year, these gatherings were held under the motto “Truth and Justice”, demanding the lifting of the defense secret which is blocking the investigation into the triple homicide of 2013. Ten years after the assassination of Sakine Cansiz, 54, Fidan Dogan, 30, and Leyla Saylemez, 25, no trial could stand. All three held high positions within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), at war with the Turkish state; they were shot several times in the head inside the Kurdistan Information Center compound.
Blacked out pages
The alleged perpetrator, Omer Güney, was quickly imprisoned, but this Turkish nationalist infiltrated into Kurdish circles died of cancer in detention at the end of 2016, a few weeks before the opening of his trial before an assize court. . The investigation was relaunched in 2019 by a new complaint with civil action by the families of the victims against the sponsors and accomplices. The final indictment that preceded the trial, which was never held, directly implicated MIT, the Turkish secret services, which denied any role in the triple assassination.
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But for three years, the instruction of judge Régis Pierre has come up against the secret-defense opposed by the executive to wiretaps carried out on Turkish agents installed in France, who could have played a role in the triple assassination committed by Omer Güney. Another case in Belgium, where PKK officials were targeted by a failed attack, has indeed revealed ramifications in France. On two occasions, the national defense secrecy commission refused declassification requests. At the time, the Minister of Defense, Jean-Yves Le Drian, then the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, complied with these opinions, which were however not binding. Under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy, the State ignored an unfavorable opinion on the declassification of army archives on Operation “Turquoise” in Rwanda.
source: globeecho