A senior Islamic State (ISIS) operative received a reduced sentence from a Turkish court in 2014 for his involvement in the fundamentalist organisation, it emerged on Monday, despite incriminating execution and training videos in his file. The individual is also one of the main defendants in the Ankara railway station bombings case, which killed at least 103 people in Turkey on 10 October 2015.
Three of the defendants in the Ankara bombings case of 2015 – Ahmet Güneş, Mustafa Delibaşlar and Ökkeş Durmaz – were arrested in Gaziantep on 25 March 2014 during a routine road check. A variety of documents were found in their vehicle, as well as digital materials hidden in the bushes in front of the car.
The materials seized from them included footage showing these individuals receiving military training at ISIS camps in conflict zones in Syria, as well as a video showing the execution of a person. The arrested suspects were charged with membership of a terrorist organisation at the Gaziantep 5th Heavy Penal Court.
However, despite clear evidence of their involvement in ISIS training camps and the execution video, the ISIS-affiliated individuals were released on 30 June 2015 on the basis of a report by the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation (MİT). The MİT report stated that there was no information to suggest that their names were on any list of terrorist organisations, either domestically or internationally. Subsequently, the three arrested ISIS members were released within six months pending trial.
Just 12 days after the 2015 bombings, Durmaz and Delibaşlar were acquitted. Güneş was sentenced to prison for membership of a terrorist organisation. Nevertheless, these individuals, who had already been released, returned to Syria and continued to participate in ISIS activities.
In the 2015 Ankara bombing trial, documents from the 2014 trial, which had not been sent despite seven years of requests by lawyers, were only recently included in the file, revealing a clear record of the participation of both captured and fugitive suspects in the case.
The documents implicated Güneş by showing an ISIS training video, an execution video of an alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member and his association with other suspects.
It has been revealed that in the 2014 verdict, Güneş was initially sentenced to seven years and six months in prison. However, the court later reduced his sentence, citing his “good behaviour” during the trial. The court decided to use this evidence only as proof of his membership of an illegal organisation, despite the fact that Güneş can be seen in the execution video.
According to the ANKA news agency, Güneş said in his defence before the Gaziantep 5th Heavy Penal Court: “The weapons seen in the videos were left by the villagers for our self-defence. As can be seen in the footage, I was distancing myself from the group at the moment they were about to shoot the person, but they instructed me to open fire as well. By that time, the person had already been shot and killed by the group. On their instructions, I fired in the direction where the person had been shot, without specifically targeting him. My glasses are prescription, one 3.5 and the other 4, and I already have vision problems. I never said that the person was an infidel”.
He also claimed that he had only heard of al-Qaeda and ISIS through the media. He mentioned that from 2001 to 2006 he had attended a Qur’an course in Istanbul, which was affiliated with the Ismailağa community, one of Turkey’s largest Orthodox Sunni communities and close to the Turkish government. While still linked to the same community, the course now operates under a different name.
The court’s decision to return ISIS documents, including a ski mask and two hard drives, to Delibaşlar also raised eyebrows. The court said there was insufficient clear and convincing evidence to link Durmaz and Delibaşlar to the hierarchical structure of the extremist organisation or to establish an organic link between them and the group, leading to their release.
