Gagrule.net

Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • GagruleLive
  • Armenia profile

Turkey returned France priest killer to country in May 2015: Prosecutor

July 27, 2016 By administrator

People gather to pay their respects at the makeshift memorial in front of the city hall after closed to the church where an hostage taking left a priest dead the day before in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, France, Wednesday, July 27, 2016. AP photo

People gather to pay their respects at the makeshift memorial in front of the city hall after closed to the church where an hostage taking left a priest dead the day before in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy, France, Wednesday, July 27, 2016. AP photo

SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France

One of the assailants who slit the throat of an elderly French priest in France on July 26 in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was returned to France in May after being detained in Turkey, the prosecutor looking into the incident said.

French Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference July 26 that Adel Kermiche, 19, had been known to the French authorities before the shock church attack in a Normandy town, according to AFP.

Kermiche and another unidentified man stormed the centuries-old stone church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, taking priest Jacques Hamel hostage along with three nuns and two worshippers before slitting the elderly cleric’s throat.

He lived in his parents’ modest home – less than two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the church – where he spent much of the day under curfew, fitted with an electronic tag while awaiting trial for alleged links to terror.

A family member had raised the alarm after Kermiche went missing destined for war-torn Syria in March 2015.

German authorities arrested him shortly afterwards as he attempted to transit the country using his brother’s identity.

He was returned to France where he was detained on March 23, 2015 for “criminal association in connection with terrorism” and preparing a terrorist act. He was released on bail but banned from leaving the Seine-Maritime region of northern France.

Six weeks later he fled the family home once again and was ultimately traced to Turkey where he was detained on May 13, 2015.

Turkey returned Kermiche to France, where he was arrested and remanded in custody before being released on bail subject to a curfew as he awaited trial for links to terrorism, Molins said.

“We knew he wanted to go to Syria,” said a 60-year-old neighbor of the assailant’s family, who added that he “never saw him go to the mosque” that the family attended.

“He never spoke to us,” said the neighbor.

“The last time I saw him was on Friday [July 22]. He was playing football in his garden.”

One of Kermiche’s acquaintances, a youngster from the area of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, told Le Parisien newspaper that he was a “hyperactive child” who was excluded from school at the age of 12 due to “behavior issues” – adding that he was a “time bomb.”

“He only spoke about Syria, and his dream of killing [Syrian President] Bashar [al-Assad’s] soldiers,” they said.
French daily Le Monde reported that Kermiche had struggled with psychological issues for much of his life, having been monitored from the age of six and hospitalized on several occasions in his teenage years – including 15 days in a specialist psychiatric unit.

Another of the town’s residents, a teenager who said he knew the attacker, told RTL radio he was not surprised by what happened July 26.

“He talked about it all the time… He spoke about Islam, that he was going to do stuff like that. He told me two months ago, ‘I’m going to do a church.’ I didn’t believe him. He said a lot of things,” said the teenager.

July/27/2016

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: France, killer, priest, returned, terrorist, Turkey

Bodies of Armenian soldiers returned with signs of torture: Karabakh

April 11, 2016 By administrator

210001Nagorno Karabakh‘s State Commission on Prisoners of War, Hostages and Missing Persons on Sunday, April 10 exchanged bodies of fallen soldiers with the Azerbaijani side near the settlement of Bash Karvend.

The exchange was organized in accordance with an agreement, previously reached between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan through the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Karabakh Foreign Ministry said, providing no other details.

The bodies of 18 servicemen of Karabakh Defense Army were transferred to the Karabakh side.

In the presence of a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Commission registered that all bodies transferred by the Azerbaijani side had signs of torture and mutilation.

“Those acts, being a flagrant manifestation of inhumanity, run counter to the laws and customs of war and are in grave violation of the international humanitarian law, in particular, the Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949), Geneva Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) and the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I),” the Commission said in a statement.

“Karabakh will seek to ensure that Azerbaijan’s behavior is condemned in strongest terms by the international community and relevant agencies, and those responsible are brought to account.”

The parties to the Karabakh conflict agreed on a bilateral ceasefire along the contact line which came into force at midday, April 5.

Prior to that, on the night of April 1-2, Azerbaijani armed forces initiated overt offensive operations in the southern, southeastern and northeastern directions of the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh.

As of April 5, the Azerbaijani side has lost 26 tanks and 4 infantry fighting vehicles, as well as 1 BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher, 1 engineering vehicle, 2 military helicopters and 14 unmanned aerial vehicles. The Azerbaijani side has admitted the loss of 31 fighters, 1 helicopter and 1 unmanned drone, whereas the Armenian side’s photo and video materials show dozens of killed Azerbaijani troops, 1 helicopter and 3 UAVs. Opposition media outlets, however, reported on the death of 93 Azerbaijani soldiers, stating that 33 more have been wounded. According to Karabakh authorities, 300 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in clashes.

14 Karabakh tanks have been neutralized since April 2.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Armenian, Azerbaijan, bodies, returned, soldiers

Historic Cemetery Returned to Armenians in Istanbul

February 4, 2015 By administrator

MEZARLIKISTANBUL—The Armenian community of Turkey has won a legal battle for the ownership of a historic cemetery in Istanbul in the latest success story for the return of properties seized from minorities in the wake of legal amendments, the Daily Sabah reports.

The Turkish Prime Ministry’s Directorate General of Foundations, which oversees properties belonging to religious and ethnic minorities, has handed over the title deed for an ancient Armenian cemetery in Istanbul’s central Şişli district to an Armenian church organization.

Following new laws requiring the return of properties to their rightful owners, Beyoğlu Üç Horan (Yerrortutyun or Trinity) Church Foundation had applied to the Directorate in 2011 for the ownership of the cemetery. After four years and a settlement of legal matters, the Directorate granted ownership to the foundation for the cemetery, which covers some 41,950 square meters in the heart of Istanbul.

The cemetery’s history dates back to the 19th century in which a Sultan’s decree ordered its handover to the Armenian community. In the 1930s, its ownership was transferred to the Istanbul Municipality. Yet, Armenian families were allowed to bury their deceased next of kin in the cemetery even though they had no official deeds for the plots.

Among the cemetery’s notable occupants are Arman Manukyan, a notable professor of economy from Boğaziçi University, opera singer Toto Karaca, composer Onno Tunç, Armenian patriarchs, and Armenian lawmaker Berç Keresteciyan Türker, who is known for his contributions to the Turkish War of Independence.

The place is the latest property that the Armenian community has obtained back after their confiscation by the state. In 2012, the Directorate General of Foundations had returned the title deed of the Armenian Catholic Cemetery in Şişli to the community and a valuable plot in Zeytinburnu district to Yedikule Surp Pergich Hospital Foundation.

Foundations set up by non-Muslim minorities were granted the right to acquire properties in 1912 but a new law in 1935 ordered them to declare the properties they owned and register their title deeds. In 1936, a list of entire properties owned by minorities was handed to the Directorate General of Foundations and minorities were prevented from acquiring any property other than those in the list, thanks to an unofficial ban that was viewed as the state’s hostility towards minorities who were treated as “second-class” citizens. In 1976, the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals had effectively enforced the ban and also ordered the return of properties minorities had acquired until that year. Soon, countless plots and buildings, especially in upscale districts of Istanbul, were handed to the Treasury after their seizure from Greek and Armenian communities.

Markar Esayan, a columnist for Daily Sabah, says minorities have suffered from “illegal policies” of the state-run foundations authority that exploited legal loopholes. “Until [2008], they suffered at the hands of fascistic measures,” he says, referring to the year that an amendment in the relevant laws “helped the state to repair its past mistakes.”

“Laws in the past dealt a blow to the self-sustainability of the churches whose survival solely depended on schools, hospitals and other sources of revenues,” Esayan says. He noted that a series of decrees helped minorities to regain their rights in terms of return of properties. “Currently, properties returned constitute 10 percent of the total properties supposed to be returned. Nevertheless, it is a very important, democratic step that the state stopped seeing minorities as enemies,” Esayan says. He said that minorities complain of several technical shortcomings in laws regarding church foundations that sometimes complicate the procedure of returning the properties. “The rate of returns is not sufficient. Yet, what matters more now is a change in the mindset, a very radical change (in the view of minorities by the state),” he says.

Associate Professor Toros Alcan, chairman of Armenian community’s Surp Haç Tibrevank Foundation and board member of Directorate General of Foundations, says the return of properties was “what the minorities yearned for decades.” “I can safely say on behalf of minorities that we are very happy with decisions to return the properties,” Alcan says. He said what then prime minister and incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once said, “It is not a blessing by the state for minorities but rather a resumption of their rights.”

Filed Under: Articles, Genocide Tagged With: Armenian Church, Historic, İstanbul, returned

Bodies returned! Eternal glory to our guys – David Sanasaryan

November 23, 2014 By administrator

Return-bodyThe opposition Heritage party’s press secretary has left a Facebook post expressing his delight with the military operations that led to the recovery of the downed MI-24 helicopters’ crew. 
“We have got the guys’ bodies! Eternal glory to them! Strength to their families and high spirit to soldiers! Thanks to our intelligence! Our martyred heroes were returned on [Karabakh war hero] Leonid Azgaldyan’s birthday. This is not [an occasion of] joy; just a little attempt to reinstate our honor,” reads David Sanasaryan’s status.
Sanasaryan declared a hunger strike in front of the OSCE Office in Yerevan on Tuesday, demanding an international attention to Azerbaijan’s continuing armed violence to prevent an access to the crash site.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: bodies, Karabakh, returned

Support Gagrule.net

Subscribe Free News & Update

Search

GagruleLive with Harut Sassounian

Can activist run a Government?

Wally Sarkeesian Interview Onnik Dinkjian and son

https://youtu.be/BiI8_TJzHEM

Khachic Moradian

https://youtu.be/-NkIYpCAIII
https://youtu.be/9_Xi7FA3tGQ
https://youtu.be/Arg8gAhcIb0
https://youtu.be/zzh-WpjGltY





gagrulenet Twitter-Timeline

Tweets by @gagrulenet

Archives

Books

Recent Posts

  • U.S. Judge Dismisses $500 Million Lawsuit By Azeri Lawyer Against ANCA & 29 Others
  • These Are the Social Security Offices Expected to Close This Year, Musk call SS Ponzi Scheme
  • Breaking News, Pashinyan regime has filed charges against public figure Edgar Ghazaryan,
  • ANCA’s Controversial Endorsement: Implications for Armenian Voters
  • (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, has invited Kurdish Leader Öcalan to the Parliament “Ask to end terrorism and dissolve the PKK.”

Recent Comments

  • administrator on Turkish Agent Pashinyan will not attend the meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State
  • David on Turkish Agent Pashinyan will not attend the meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State
  • Ara Arakelian on A democratic nation has been allowed to die – the UN has failed once more “Nagorno-Karabakh”
  • DV on A democratic nation has been allowed to die – the UN has failed once more “Nagorno-Karabakh”
  • Tavo on I’d call on the people of Syunik to arm themselves, and defend your country – Vazgen Manukyan

Copyright © 2025 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in