Fehriye Erdal
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Fehriye Erdal is a female Kurdish Left-wing activist from Turkey suspected of terrorism.
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[edit] Early life
Fehriye Erdal was born on February 25, 1977 in Kangal, Sivas Province, Turkey to Kurdish Alevi parents. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Adana. When Fehriye and her sister went on to study at university in Istanbul, her family moved along with them. There, she studied political and social science. It is during this time that she came into contact with the Marxist-Leninist DHKP-C, considered as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
[edit] Sabancı Assassination
In the summer of 1995, Erdal got a job at a cleaning firm, which allowed her access to the Sabancı Towers. It is now widely accepted that this was part of the preparatory work for the murder. On January 9, 1996, Fehriye Erdal claimed that she had lost her badge to gain access to the building and requested the use of a colleague's badge. Using this badge, she allowed two armed men, Mustafa Duyar and İsmail Akkol, to enter the Sabancı building. The two men, who were assassins associated with DHKP-C, were led to the executive floor by Erdal, and proceeded to shoot and kill Özdemir Sabancı, Sabancı Holding CEO Haluk Görgün and a secretary, Nilgün Hasefe. Erdal had fled the scene before the murder was even discovered. This contradicted her earliest explanation that she left to escape false accusations because of her well-known DHKP-C sympathy. Özdemir Sabancı was at that time one of the internationally well-known businessmen in Turkey and head of the Toyota Factory in Turkey. Sabancı family has been one of the richest families of Turkey since the establishment of Turkish Republic.
[edit] Capture and Belgian trial
In 1996, Erdal fled her country as a wanted fugitive. No sign of her appeared until she was arrested for possession of weapons in Belgium in 1999. She was using a false name at that time.
In the summer of 2000, she acquired her release by a 45 days long hunger strike. She was moved to a secret location under supervision. However, when the location (Charleroi) got leaked, she moved to Brussels. She lived right above the information bureau of DHKP-C in the Stevinstraat.
The Turkish government requested her extradition but Belgium refused, and the Belgian judicial system declared that it would not prosecute Erdal for crimes committed in Istanbul despite the charges of terrorism. Turkey's requests for the extradition of Erdal as a terrorist were denied on the grounds that Erdal was not a terrorist because the European anti-terrorism treaty does not consider an armed crime a "terrorist action" unless the crime was committed with an automatic weapon (The weapons used in the Sabanci attack were semi-automatic). At that time, Turkey had not abolished the death penalty yet.
On February 28, 2006, a court in the Belgian city of Bruges sentenced Erdal. She was found guilty of using false identification, forming a gang, and carrying unlicensed weapons. The court did not mention the murder in Istanbul. Another six members of the DHKP-C group, were sentenced to four to six years in prison. However, Erdal managed to escape despite the constant surveillance of the Belgian intelligence services ("staatsveiligheid"). Musa Aşoğlu, a fellow DHKP-C member, is thought by some to have helped her. Aşoğlu was also convicted the next day. Up to this moment, Erdal's whereabouts are still unknown.
Belgian police have contacted Interpol to issue an international arrest warrant, a spokeswoman for the Belgian Justice Ministry confirmed Wednesday. In March 2006, Turkish television station NTV reported that Erdal was seen in Larnaca, Cyprus.
The court proceedings and the eventual escape of Erdal have been very controversial issues in Turkey and Belgium alike, considering that there is almost no doubt about Erdal's role in the murders. Turkey accuses Belgium of having provided Erdal in Brussels and allowing her to escape justice. Turkish media has frequently suggested that Belgium did not consider Turkish terrorists to be terrorists unless they harmed Belgium interests.
