Ömer Güney Archives

Two years have passed since three Kurdish women affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed in Paris, but those behind the attack are yet to be found, although the French police apprehended two suspects, one of them alleged to have links with Turkish intelligence, shortly after the crime.

On Jan. 9, 2013, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez were shot dead at the Kurdistan Information Bureau in Paris.

The killings took place shortly after the Turkish government launched talks with the PKK, recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and EU, to resolve the country’s long-standing Kurdish problem.

A Turkish daily claimed in February of last year that the prime suspect in the crime, Ömer Güney, who was arrested for an alleged plot to murder, had close ties to the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT).

The claim was previously denied by MİT following the release in January last year of a video allegedly featuring a conversation between Güney and two MİT agents.

According to the report published on Feb. 20 in the daily, one of the 13 phone numbers on suspect Güney’s phone contact list belonged to MİT.

Karşı’s report came after Ankara rejected a request from the French Ministry of Justice to reveal the identity of Güney’s contacts. Of the 13 numbers on Güney’s phone, five were landlines, while the others belonged to mobile phones, the report claimed. Güney is the last person who saw the three victims alive.

The report said one of the numbers belongs to the Erzurum provincial branch of MİT. In addition, the number is registered as such in a Turkish telephone directory system. Although the number was in the contact list on Güney’s Nokia phone found at his Paris apartment, it is not yet clear whether Güney had contacted this number.

MİT denied allegations in January of last year that it was the instigator of the murders. A statement released by the intelligence organization also said an internal administrative investigation into the claims was launched.

A video released over YouTube in January of last year allegedly featured Güney and two MİT agents over plans to murder Cansız, who is one of the co-founders of the PKK. The voice recording included details such as where and how to obtain two guns, how to pay for them and how to leave the crime scene after committing the murder.

Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suggested back in January that the killing might be an intra-PKK conflict, pointing out that a code was needed to enter the building where the women were killed.

Erdoğan suggested that someone must have knocked and the women must have opened the door, but that they would not have opened the door to someone they did not know. “They opened the door to someone they knew,” he stated.

Apart from the investigation that French prosecutors opened, the deputy chief public prosecutor’s office in Ankara also launched an investigation based on the Turkish anti-terror law. Reports in the Turkish media back in 2013 maintained that French authorities did not send the case file of the slain women to Turkey amid disagreements on the extradition of terrorists to Turkey.

Güney, who was reported to have visited Turkey on three different occasions in the year preceding the killings is from Turkey like the three victims.

The murders were seen in Turkey as an effort to derail the ongoing settlement process launched at the end of 2012 to resolve the Kurdish issue between the government and the terrorist organization.

Report today ZAMAN

Ömer Güney, a Turkish indicted for murder in early 2013 in Paris three Kurdish activists, is suspected by the French court of plotting his escape, AFP learned Tuesday from sources.

He was indicted on May 7 for its participation in a consortium formed to prepare an escape with the use of weapons or explosive substance, said a judicial source.

This project appeared in early January after a meeting in the parlor of his prison between Güney and Ömer a man moved to Germany where investigators visited, indicated sources familiar with the matter.

Elements that appear to certify the plan of escape were found in the cell phone of the man, according to these sources. To escape, Ömer Güney planned to use a weapon, including against representatives of the forces of order, she said.

His lawyer, Xavier Nogueras, declined to comment.

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the murders by gunfire, described by investigators as real executions, Sakine Cansiz, Dogan Fidan and Leyla Saylemez the Kurdish Information Centre (CIK) in Paris January 9, 2013: Regulation of Internal Auditors the Kurdish movement in the context of opening of peace talks between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Ankara, act of extreme right movement of Turkish “Grey Wolves” political assassination or heinous crime or personal dispute .

Sakine Cansiz was a historical figure of the PKK, considered close to its historic leader Abdullah Öcalan.

But in the eyes of activists and supporters of the Kurdish question, political assassination sponsored by Turkish services no doubt.

Heard repeatedly by the judge described as elusive by those who rubbed shoulders, Ömer Güney denies any involvement. But internet broadcasting it a few months recording weakened his position, according to sources close to the investigation.

Turkish Denial services –

A man will address two speakers presented as Turkish officials. According to a warning issued at the beginning of the recording, it was posted by a user who is as near Ömer Güney.

The latter would have given him 17 January 2013, before his arrest, asking him to “go public if something happened to him.” The three men will evoke the murder of three activists to come.

At the time of release of this record earlier this year, the Turkish intelligence service, MIT, had again denied any involvement in the crime. He denounced “an operation to undermine” the service “who played an important role in the process of Kurdish peace.”

According to the prosecutor of Paris, Güney was appointed by the PKK as the driver and escort in Paris Sakine Cansiz, one of the victims.

However, the PKK has denied that Mr. Güney was one of its members, explaining that he had made the infiltration in the Paris Kurdish movement from the end of 2011, winning the trust of its members. Kurdish activists have subsequently discovered that he was “from a family close to the extreme right nationalist Turkish”.

The French police are interested in its route, particularly before his arrival in France and during his stay in Germany.

They try to trace the many telephone exchanges to Turkey of a man who had many SIM cards, including Turkey. It had been controlled in late 2012 in the Netherlands in possession of such cards.

The investigators also determined that the day before the murders, Güney was photographed records of members of a Kurdish association Val-d’Oise.

Ankara and the PKK in armed struggle against the Turkish forces since 1984, engaged in a peace process that stalled today.

AFP