Afrin... The arrest of three elderly people on a fabricated charge that caused the killing of a Turkish officer thirty years ago

ARK News.. A Human Rights Organization working to document violations in the Kurdish region of Afrin reported on its main page of Facebook on Monday, 06.07.2020, that the Turkish forces are still striving in every possible way to fabricate the arguments to pressure the indigenous Kurds in the Afrin region in order to compel those who remain attached to their lands, national identity and history to consider leaving their region and resettle the Arab and Turkmen populations instead of them to bring about demographic change despite their use other tools, such as the armed militias loyal to it, which fall under the name of "Free Syrian National Army" and the settlers together, in the service of its expansionist settlement projects.

The organization added that, according to this, the news written in the Turkish Anatolia Agency came on 05/07/2020 of the arrest of three elderly people from the area after the raid on their homes by the military police and kidnapping them on 02/07/2020 on charges of causing the killing of a Turkish officer with the rank of lieutenant from Border Guard forces thirty years ago, on 16/06/1990, while they infiltrated into Turkish territory within the administrative borders of the state of Iskenderun "Hatay" and forced them to confess and carry out smuggling and hand them over to the Turkish intelligence services that transferred them to the judiciary in the state of Iskenderun and they are:

1 - Saleh Hassan Othman, known as Shikou, born in 1961 AD, from the village of Ma’mala of Rajo township.

2 - Muhammad Hussein Muhammad was born in 1956, known as a sheikh from the village of Shadya of Rajo township.

3 - Hassan Murad Abdullah, born in 1947, nicknamed Haj Mira, a resident of the village of Kurre of Rajo township.

The Organization also added that after communicating with the people of the neighboring villages and researching their old files, it became clear that the three citizens, like the citizens living on both sides of the Syrian-Turkish Kurdish border, had worked in smuggling for several times, as the Turkish citizens were working in smuggling, just like the citizens in other areas where it is taking place. Smuggling operations on the interstate border as a source of livelihood along with their work in agriculture.

The Organization made clear that on the date mentioned above 16/06/1990 - that is, thirty years ago, clashes took place between the smugglers between each other to clash their interests and reneged the agreement on the part of the Turkish smugglers who tried to seize the smuggled goods (smoke - tea) from the Kurdish smugglers and exposure their intentions, as a result, the Turkish border guard forces intervened and the smugglers fled randomly on the border line and spreading an estimated distance of about 1 km and with the participation of large numbers of Turkish smugglers who fired the first shots and the response to the source by the border guard forces at the site called "Gomitte" near the Batman Spring in Sorke area to chase Syrian and Turkish smugglers inside Syrian territory, then the officer and one of his companions were killed due to that clash, and in that period (the next day 17/06/1990) the mayor of Afrin and the director of Rajo township were summoned to the Qiriq Khan city. Those who fled into the Syrian territories, the murderer was identified and arrested in the Syrian Kurdish lands, and he was linked to a Turkish gendarmerie car and dragged into the Turkish borders. At the time, the director of Rajo township imprisoned the three mentioned Kurds above for a period of six months on charges of working in the field of smuggling only, and the crime of murder was not proven on them. On the other hand, the killing of the officer and his companions was confirmed by the Kalashnikov bullet that was carried by the Turkish smugglers.

Note that the three kidnapped Kurdish citizens are not owners of smuggled goods, but rather they work as porters and receive wages for their fees and are not armed, and therefore the accusation of the three is only an excuse to implement its agendas and projects with the direct contribution of the Free Syrian National Army, which provides arguments and evidence with the power of a weapon Turkish forces to prove they had committed the murder. It was better for them in the ministries of defense and the interior, the Free Syrian National Army, which is affiliated with the Provisional Syrian Government, to defend the victims than the Syrian peasants and Kurds, who were previously killed and murdered until today while working on their agricultural lands along the border and defending those who are killed as a result of running over the Turkish military cars to them within the Syrian territories, as well as by the Turkish Guard forces during the infiltration into Turkish territory who were escaping from the barrels and artillery shells fired by the Syrian regime forces instead of accusing them according to a fabricated scenario and handing them over to criminal cases.

Note… Gomitte: An ancient Syrian Kurdish village, located in the plain of the villages of Umara and Ma’mila , the residence of the Hussein Agha family – Rash Agha - during the French mandate, after the approval of the demarcation of the borders, the barbed wire of the border line passed through the center of the village, and the village was evacuated from its original Kurdish population and displaced and divided their lands on both sides of the border, and therefore the village gradually disappeared, and there is nothing left of it now except the ruins that indicate the existence of the village previously.

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