US embassy bomber tolerated in Germany: report

ISTANBUL

Ecevit Şanlı, a member of the outlawed DHKP/C, blew himself up in front of the US Embassy in Ankara, killing a security guard and injuring a journalist. AA photo

The suicide bomber of the deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara entered Turkey from Germany, where he had been tolerated for many years, according to the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel.

On Feb. 1, Ecevit Şanlı, a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP/C), blew himself up in front of the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, killing a Turkish security guard and seriously injuring one journalist. German authorities had been well aware that the suicide bomber was a political hothead and that he had been staying in Germany until a few months before the bombing, Der Spiegel reported yesterday. In April 2011, the German federal prosecutor’s office launched a covert investigation against him on suspicion of being a “member of a foreign terrorist organization.” According to the investigation Şanlı had most recently been in the North Rhine-Westphalia, but he was not arrested. German authorities relocated him between Christmas and New Year.

The Turkish police contacted the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) contacted the German domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Ankara told the Germans that they had information suggesting that Şanlı had entered Turkey to commit a bombing there. On Jan. 2, the BKA said it had lost track of him mid-October.