Nine years after three men, including a German national, were brutally murdered at a Bible publisher in eastern Turkey, five suspects were sentenced to life in the final hearing of the case on Wednesday. The verdict concluded that the trial has been entangled with controversy after five men caught red-handed were released with judiciary control and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) was accused of influencing the trial to implicate its foes in the case. Sixteen other defendants including a former high-ranking general were acquitted by the court in the city of Malatya while two former officers were sentenced to prison terms of up to 14 years.
Tillman Geske, a German national and Turkish converts to Christianity Necati Aydın and Uğur Yüksel were tortured and stabbed to death in Zirve publishing house on April 18, 2007 in the grisly murders that came a few months after a prominent Turkish Armenian journalist was shot dead in Istanbul. Emre Günaydın, Abuzer Yıldırım, Cuma Özdemir, Hamit Çeker and Salih Gürler, five men in their twenties, were arrested following the murder as they tried to flee the scene, and the murder was considered a hate crime towards Christians. However, several prominent figures including General Hurşit Tolon were later included in the case blamed on Ergenekon terrorist organization. Years later, Ergenekon was exposed as an imaginary group concocted by FETÖ to imprison its critics.
The court ordered for three aggravated life sentences for each of the five suspects for manslaughter while Tolon and 15 others were acquitted. Retired colonel Mehmet Ülger and Major Haydar Yeşil, who led gendarmerie troops in the city at the time of the murders, were sentenced to 13 and 14 years, respectively, in prison on charges of violation of privacy and forgery of documents in relation to gathering intelligence on missionary activities in Malatya before and after the murders.
Five suspects were released with judiciary control and were ordered to wear electronic tracing bracelets in 2014 in a controversial ruling stemming from amendments in the law that reduces detention periods for suspects not formally charged.
The trial of the suspects was supposed to end in 2011 with a verdict, but Zekeriya Öz, a prosecutor with affiliation to the Gülen Movement, filed a new indictment claiming a group of former and active-duty military officers and civilians orchestrated the murders. Öz, wanted for FETÖ membership, remains at large.
Gülenists were accused of influencing major trials through fabricated evidence planted by police officers affiliated with the movement.
Addressing the court before the judges issued the verdict, the defendants either blamed each other for the murders or blamed FETÖ for their conviction. Salih Gürler, one of the defendants, said Emre Günaydın was a resident of the dormitories run by Gülenists and was backed by "police chiefs." Gürler said the court should investigate Ali Osman Kahya, the police chief of Malatya at the time of murders. Cuma Özdemir, another defendant, pointed out that former judges and prosecutors who handled the case were arrested on charges of FETÖ membership, claiming Emre Günaydın committed the murders and FETÖ's links to the murders were not properly investigated.
The court also ordered filing complaints to the chief prosecutor's offices for former prosecutors who handled the case who are currently in custody for links to FETÖ, as well as police officers and gendarmerie troops who were on duty in Malatya at the time of the murders. "(The murders) and scope of the case indicate this is not a murder plot by five people. The court decided to file a criminal complaint to the Chief Prosecutor's Office for the investigation of perpetrators and the organization masterminding the murders as this lengthy trial that took nine years failed to shed light on them," the court said in its verdict.