Plaintiff lawyers in the case of three Christian workers murdered in a Christian publishing house in Malatya, Turkey, have had to tolerate further delays after an important fax “went missing”.  

Necati Aydin, Tilmann Geske, and Ugur Yuksel were murdered in April 2007.

Lawyer Ozkan Yucel Soylu declared that the impartiality and independence of the court was in jeopardy after judges refused to accept evidence relevant to the case (such as the killers’ computer records and photographs from the autopsies). Moreover, the judges only permitted abbreviated summaries of the legal arguments and witness statements to be taken during the proceedings. After lodging the complaint well before the usual deadline, the lawyers discovered the court had incorrectly faxed only part of the document... to the wrong office.

The lawyers also had to wait three weeks for police protection, after repeated threats were made against them.

Meanwhile, in another twist, the court heard that prime murder suspect Emre Gunaydin purchased a gun on April 16, 2007, just two days before the murder. Apparently he was detained by police on April 17 for shooting the pistol in Malatya’s Pinarbasi district. Police records indicate that after being interrogated, Gunaydin was released and the pistol was confiscated. However, this same gun was found at the scene of the Malatya killings on April 18, the following day. How the gun came to be in Gunaydin’s possession at that point is unclear.

The three victims of the killings, Necati Aydin, Ugur Yuksel, and Tilmann Geske of Zirve Publishing House were tortured and slaughtered a year ago by youths who carried in their pockets written notes that the killings were religiously and politically motivated. Evidence now suggests that the young men were co-opted by the ‘Ergenekon’ network—a group classified by the Turkish government as a “terrorist organisation”. It is believed that Ergenekon is also responsible for the murders of Armenia journalist Hrant Dink and Catholic priest Andrea Santoro. Turkish news outlets have reported that recent police raids uncovered evidence that Ergenekon was seeking to stage a coup in 2009 and is acting to destabilize Turkish society in advance.