Officer who shot Berkin Elvan identified almost three years after shooting

ISTANBUL

A legal investigation has revealed the identity of the police officer who shot the youngest victim of the Gezi Park protests, 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, almost three years after a tear gas canister that fatally injured Elvan was fired on June 2013. 

A report by daily Milliyet suggests that the police officer who caused Elvan’s death has finally been identified, almost two years after the teenager succumbed to his wounds following a 269-day coma on March 11, 2014. 

Camera footage from the incident displayed two police officers shooting tear gas at the spot where Elvan, then 14, sustained his wounds. 

The footage was retrieved from the camera of a riot control vehicle with water cannon, popularly known as a TOMA, and was sent to the gendarmerie criminal laboratory for investigation. 

An expert report identified a police officer and a police superintendent as suspects, but it was later determined that only the police officer’s position matched the direction from where Elvan was shot. 

According to reports, the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office has since been searching for the suspect and finally identified the officer – some two years after the footage was retrieved. 

The officer was transferred to a different province and will testify in the coming days, daily Milliyet reported.

Meanwhile, the duty and identity of the police officer remain confidential. 

Elvan was the eighth person to be killed in the Gezi Park protests. He was sent into a coma after sustaining a head injury from a gas canister as he went to buy bread during a police crackdown in Istanbul’s Okmeydanı neighborhood in June 2013. Elvan subsequently became one of the prime symbols of state violence against protesters during the nationwide Gezi demonstrations.