Efforts to uncover dead agent’s body fail in all three attempts

TEKİRDAĞ

Ayhan Çarkın, (C) led prosecutors and law enforcement officers to three different locations, where he claimed ladi the body of Tarık Ümit, a former member of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). However, the investigators’ efforts to uncover Ümit’s body finally came to nothing and Çarkın was brought back police headquarters. AA photo

Former special operations police officer Ayhan Çarkın, whose confessions regarding extrajudicial killings led to the arrests of a number of other operatives, yesterday led investigators to three locations in Istanbul where he claimed an agent’s body had been buried.

Officials involved in the excavation work, however, failed to find any trace of the body of Tarık Ümit, a former member of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), at any of the three spots Çarkın led them to.

“I do not know the exact location. We had passed through a narrow road with the vehicle. It must be here,” Çarkın reportedly said when he directed officials to an area near Beyciler village in Istanbul’s Silivri district yesterday morning.

Crime scene investigation units subsequently started an excavation in the area, but officials eventually asked Çarkın whether Ümit’s body might have been buried elsewhere due to his hesitance, according to reports.

In turn, Çarkın then described another location on the road from Istanbul to the northwestern province of Tekirdağ in the district of Çerkezköy, 5 km from Beyciler village.

Çarkın was consequently brought to Kuşbahçe in Çerkezköy and officials then began another excavation in the area. Çarkın, wearing body armor and handcuffed to another officer, reportedly spoke to the prosecutors and officers about a pathway and an abandoned vehicle.

Police units then started searching with dogs and detectors in the area where Çarkın said there had been a pathway, but to no avail.

Çarkın finally led the prosecutors and law enforcement officers to a third location in vicinity of Beyciler village. After showing the officials certain spots, he eventually began moving toward the Umut Foundation Remembrance Forest. Troops then cordoned off the areas Çarkın showed them.

After 40 minutes of digging with tractors, however, the investigators’ efforts to uncover Ümit’s body finally came to nothing and Çarkın was consequently brought back to Silivri district police headquarters.
The group accompanying Çarkın, who was brought to Istanbul from an Ankara prison Dec. 21, also included Cemalettin Ümit, the murdered agent’s uncle.

Çarkın had publicly confessed that agent Ümit, who disappeared March 2, 1995, had been murdered and that he could lead investigators to the crime scene.

Çarkın also said he could show where and how Behçet Cantürk had been killed in Istanbul’s Sapanca district after he was snatched from the Fenerbahçe Officers’ Club. He testified in court Dec. 20 in relation to those comments.

Çarkın’s confessions in relation to extrajudicial killings committed in the 1990s by state-sponsored groups during the fight between government forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) led to the arrest of a number of other special operatives.

Compiled from Doğan news agency and Anatolia news agency stories by the Daily News staff in Istanbul.