Ankara Massacre lawyers ask gov't to disclose whereabouts of detained ISIS operatives

Attorneys representing the victims of the 2015 Ankara Massacre have asked the government to reveal what happened to ISIS operatives who were previously announced to have been detained in Turkey. Meanwhile, it has come out to light that a Turkish court on April 16, 2020 released ISIS militant named Ömer Yetek, who had recorded the burning of Turkish soldiers in Syria and later released the footage, pending his trial.

Thursday September 23 2021 06:06 pm

This file photo shows pictures of Ankara Massacre victims in front of the Central Train Station.

Duvar English

The Lawyers Commission of the October 10 Ankara Massacre Case has asked the government to disclose the whereabouts of the ISIS operatives caught in Turkey, following the recent imprisonment of an ISIS judge (“qadi”) who is charged with ordering the burning of two Turkish soldiers in Syria.

A Turkish court last week rearrested Jamal Abdulrahman Alwi, the group's so-called judge, after a journalist wrote about his release from prison earlier in the year.

In their statement on Sept. 22, the lawyers said that it was “not surprising” for Turkish authorities to let the ISIS judge roam free in Turkey since they had found out during October 10 Ankara Massacre case that the police had done “nothing about ISIS militants [in Turkey] despite monitoring them in a strict way.”

The lawyers said that although there was a video image showing Ahmet Güneş, one of the suspects of the October 10 Massacre case, executing a captive in Syria, a court in the southeastern province of Gaziantep let him walk free, as a result of which Güneş fled to Syria and got involved in the massacres that occurred in Turkey.

“During the five-year-lasting [October 10 Ankara Massacare] trial process, we have shared with the public that both [Turkish] courts and police forces had adopted a very tolerant stance to ISIS militants,” the lawyers said.

ISIS' twin suicide attack outside Central Ankara railway station killed more than one hundred people and injured more than five hundred on Oct. 10, 2015. The massacre went down as the deadliest terror attack in modern Turkish history. No official responsible has yet stood trial in the case.

Although some of the suspects responsible for the massacre were in 2015 on the watch list of the police in Gaziantep, they were not arrested. Some had even arrest warrants on them.

The lawyers listed the names of several ISIS operatives whose names had appeared before in the press and asked the government where the detained militants were now.

ISIS militant who recorded burning of Turkish soldiers released from jail in 2020

Meanwhile, it has come out to light that a Turkish court on April 16, 2020 released ISIS militant named Ömer Yetek, who had recorded the burning of Turkish soldiers in Syria and later released the footage, pending his trial, ANKA news agency reported on Sept. 23.

Yetek, the so-called “media employee” of ISIS, was caught in Ankara in 2018. The name of Yetek had also appeared in the file of the October 10 Ankara Massacre case as a witness. Following his testimony in Ankara in 2018, Yetek was sent to Istanbul, where his trial continued. But on April 16, 2020, he was released by a court order and his whereabouts is currently unknown.

In his testimony in 2018, Yetek had listed the names of several ISIS militants who were responsible for organizing the attacks in Turkey.