Çarkın returns to jail after unresolved search

ISTANBUL

Having led prosecturs to four different locations, Çarkın was returned to prison. DHA photo

Former special operations police officer Ayhan Çarkın, who had publicly confessed to his involvement in extrajudicial killings, was returned to the prison where he was serving his sentence in Ankara after he led investigators to several spots in Istanbul and Sakarya provinces, where he claimed the body of a murdered Kurdish mob boss had been buried.

Çarkın was brought to the district of Sapanca in the northwestern province of Sakarya on Thursday night after he had already directed the prosecutors and officers throughout the day to three different locations in Istanbul where he had claimed the body of murdered agent Tarık Ümit had been dumped.
The officials, however, did not find any trace of the agent, who had gone missing March 2, 1995. Çarkın was later returned to Ankara prison.

Cantürk was a mob boss of Kurdish origin whose name was on an alleged list of Kurdish businessmen to be killed prepared in the mid 1990s by security and intelligence officers.

Çarkın had 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.