One of the assailants in a deadly armed attack on the US Consulate General in İstanbul in July had engaged in phone conversations with suspects arrested as part of the investigation into Ergenekon.
Thursday, 18 September 2008 08:51
One of the assailants in a deadly armed attack on the US Consulate General in İstanbul in July had engaged in phone conversations with suspects arrested as part of the investigation into Ergenekon, a neo-nationalist gang believed to be the extension of a clandestine network of groups with members in the armed forces that planned to overthrow the government.
Erkan Kargın, one of the assailants killed in the attack, had talked to individuals currently in jail as Ergenekon suspects, the police investigation into the US Consulate General attack showed. According to transcripts of the phone conversations recorded last year with a special warrant as part of the Ergenekon investigation, Kargın was in close contact with a group within Ergenekon that was trying to infiltrate the İsmailağa religious community, whose members reside in the very conservative Çarşamba area of Fatih in Istanbul. Most of the phone conversations were about this mission of infiltrating the community, police sources say.
Shortly after the US consulate attack, Kargın’s family, in their testimony to the police, had stated that he had contact with mysterious individuals.
Four gunmen stormed a guard post outside of the US Consulate General in İstanbul’s İstinye neighborhood on the morning of July 9, starting a deadly shootout. Three assailants, identified as Erkan Kargın, Bülent Çınar and Raif Topcil, were killed in the assault. Three Turkish police officers, Nedim Çalık, Mehmet Önder Saçmalıoğlu and Erdal Öztaş, were also slain. Computers, Internet communications and phone conversations of the three terrorists were thoroughly examined by the police in the ensuing investigation. Details of Öztaş’s phone records showed that the terrorist had contacts with a large number of people who are part of the Ergenekon network, a fact that further supports allegations that Ergenekon was behind the US consulate shootings.
Source: www.worldbulletin.net, 18 September 2008