Prosecutor seizes soldiers’ guns in Diyarbakır’s Lice

DİYARBAKIR - Doğan News Agency

The Diyarbakır Governor’s Office has distributed photos showing burnt workers’ tents near a Lice outpost construction site to media outlets. DHA Photo

The Diyarbakır Chief Prosecutor decided to seize all weapons at a gendarmerie station in the province’s Lice district as part of an investigation into the incident in which one protester was killed and nine people were wounded.

A melee between security forces and another group left one person dead and nine others severely injured on June 28, in clashes between police and local protesters opposing the construction of a new gendarmerie outpost in the village of Kayacık in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

The Interior Ministry said it had appointed four inspectors to go to the region to investigate the issue.
As part of its investigation, the prosecutor’s office pulled all the weapons from the outpost for a ballistics test.

The protesters had demanded the construction work be halted, which started a few months ago to expand the military post, and then attacked the post with molotov bombs, demolishing the worksite where the workers stayed.

Drug trafficking

The Diyarbakır Governor’s Office previously blamed drug-traffic in the region for the protests, stating that “the successful counter-narcotic operations of security forces were the reason for the recent incidents.”

The office said that the groups, who had significant interests in the illicit drug trafficking in the region, launched such initiatives in Lice.

The groups feared that, with the beginning of “resolution process,” they would lose their income gained by illicit drug trafficking so they had tried to sabotage the process by causing the recent incidents in Lice, said the office.

A legal investigation regarding the case was conducted by the public prosecutor of the southeastern Diyarbakır.