Eight detained in alleged suicide case

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

Col. Kazım Çillioğlu allegedly committed suicide in 1994 as he was serving in the eastern province of Tunceli.

A Turkish court issued a warrant yesterday for the detention of one retired and seven active-duty troops in relation to the suspicious 1994 death of Col. Kazım Çillioğlu following a search at the Düzce Gendarmerie Regiment Command.

Authorities ordered the detention of the eight suspects in connection with an earlier finding that the phone line used by Gökhan Çillioğlu, the colonel’s son, was illegally wiretapped.

Kazım Çillioğlu allegedly committed suicide, but the cause of death has long been disputed.

Officials conducted the search at the Provincial Gendarmerie Regiment Command in the northwestern province of Düzce in the company of three specially authorized prosecutors who arrived from Ankara upon a directive issued by Malatya specially authorized deputy prosecutor Özden Doğan.

Alleged suicide
The Specially Authorized Malatya Prosecutor’s Office in eastern Turkey is currently leading the investigation into Çillioğlu’s alleged suicide inside his lodgings in 1994 back when he was serving as the Gendarmerie Regiment Commander in the eastern province of Tunceli.
An expert report on the investigation into the colonel’s death in 1994 recently revealed that the incident was not suicide but “murder.”
Evidence also suggested that Col. Çillioğlu’s suicide note bore a forged signature, according to an investigation into the mysterious 1994 death by a specially authorized court in the eastern province of Malatya. A subsequent autopsy conducted in 2011 then revealed the presence of arsenic in the colonel’s hair and fractures on his ribs.