After only one person was found guilty for the deaths of 34 people in an explosion in 2015 that became known as ‘the Suruç Massacre’ and was sentenced to 34 life sentences, the families of the victims gathered in Istanbul to make a statement and protest against the insistence of the court to narrowly focus the case on only three defendants, and with only a single verdict at the end of the trial, MA reported.
The Suruç Families Initiative organised the press conference at the Istanbul branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD).
The families heavily criticised the court for having rejected their appeals to include other suspects including one person who had been reported to have provided the bomb for the massacre. They also criticised the court for refusing to listen to the victims families and their lawyers.
34 individuals were killed in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority town of Suruç in the lethal bomb attack as they gathered to travel to Syria’s northeastern town of Kobane, adjacent on the border to Suruç, on 20 July 2015.
The group, organised by the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations, had taken part in an aid project to deliver humanitarian aid and rebuild Kobane, destroyed after the devastating attacks of the Islamic State (ISIS).
The bombing on 20 July was reportedly claimed by ISIS.
What happened at the last session of the trial on 22 October?
A lawyer and legal representative of the families asked for the inclusion in the trial of Azzo Halaf Süleyman el Aggal, captured on 11 January 2021.
The Turkish Ministry of the Interior had earlier officially announced that he was the person who provided the bomb used in the Suruç Massacre and who had acted in coordination with ‘Abu Bera’ Mahir El Aggal, the ISIS member who planned the fatal bombing.
The judges unanimously rejected the appeal. The judges in the case had also filed criminal complaints against Çağla Seven who was wounded in the bombing, Fethi Aydın whose son was killed in the bombing, the lawyer Sezin Uçar who stated during the last session that the court wasn’t ‘independent’, and the co-chair of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) on charges that they had insulted and threatened the judges.
