Triple murder of Kurds activists in Paris

Fidan Doğan, Sakine Cansiz and Leyla Söylemez, Kurdish women activists, were killed by shooting during the night from 9 to 10 January 2013 in Paris (10th arrondissement).^[1]

Facts

Sakine Cansiz

During the night between Wednesday 9 to Thursday 10 January 2013, bodies of Fidan Doğan, Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Leyla Söylemez, all three women activists were found in premises of Centre d'information sur le Kurdistan located on 147 rue la Fayette in Paris; each of them were shot execution-style with several bullets in the head^[2]

Investigations

According to French Justice, it is possible that MİT, Turkish secret services, is involved in the murders.^[3] The suspected murderer, Omer Güney is a 34 year old Turkish male, who was maintenance employee at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport. Video cameras show that he was inside the building between 00:11 and 00:56 when the deaths occurred. Some gunpowder was found in his bag. Technical investigations were performed on his Nokia mobile phone and experts decrypted it and restored deleted files. They found images taken the day before (January 8) establishing that he was in premises of Kurdish association in Villers-le-Bel between 4:23 and 5:33 in the morning and took pictures of 329 memberships files. Two days before, he took pictures of accounting tracing racket activity inside Kurdish community^[4]

A few month months after these murders, an audio recording between Ömer Güney and some members of Turkish secret services (MIT), and some notes were anonymously released on the Internet. Omer Güney also took hundreds of pictures of Kurdish activists in his mobile phone. Antiterrorist judge Jeanne Duyé is his charge of investigations, but in September 2013, her computer was stolen at her home in a burglary. As Omer Güney was in jail from January 21, 2013, a project to escape from jail with the help of a "member of MIT" was discovered.

The judge considered the involvement of Turkish secret services in the murder to be a possibility, but didn't establish who ordered the operation and if the murderer acted according to the will of the top management or not (to stop peace talks that were occurring between Ankara and PKK at that time). On December 13, 2016, Ömer Güney was moved urgently to the hospital for a brain tumor and he died the next day, five weeks before the scheduled start of his trial.^[5] · ^[6]

Fidan Doğan in Strasbourg in 2012

Eyyup Doru, a representative of Turkish party HDP in Europe, stated that suspects that Fidan Doğan was the main target of the assassination. Lawyer Sylvie Boitel explained that this young woman was very clever and had three cultures: French, Turkish and Kurdish; one of her friends explained that she met Président François Hollande at least three times when he was leader of Socialist Party and had active relationship with French authorities.

Metin, brother of Sakine Cansiz says that France is responsible because she was killed in France and the murderer died in jail before trial.^[7]

Book

Triple Assassinat au 147, Rue Lafayette by Laure Marchand who spent three years investigating the murders and links with the Turkish secret services. It gives biographies of the three young women and discusses the politics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.^[8]

References