One arrested on alleged links to deadly bombing

GAZİANTEP - Doğan News Agency

BDP co- leader Selahattin Demirtaş (R) visits the family of one of the nine victims of the Gaziantep car bomb attack.

A school teacher who was detained Aug. 22 on accusations of organizing a terrorist bombing that killed nine people, including four children, in the southeastern province of Gaziantep was arrested yesterday.
A car laden with explosives was detonated on the evening of Aug. 20 in Gaziantep, killing nine people, of whom four were children, and injuring 68.

 M.H., a school teacher and vice-principal at a school in Siverek district of the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, was detained in Mersin on Aug. 22 on accusations of organizing the attack and helping deliver the car used in the bombing to its destination. M.H. allegedly instructed the tow-truck driver to leave the car at a spot in Gaziantep where it later blew up. Police first found the tow-truck driver after the bombing and reportedly reached M.H. through the phone number they obtained from the driver. The police is still searching for Murat Filiz, a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who is believed to have committed the bombing in Gaziantep.

Visit to victim’s family

Meanwhile, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş visited the family of the one of the nine victims of the Gaziantep car bomb attack at their home in the Ergani district of Diyarbakır. Demirtaş conveyed his condolences to Halim Anzak, the father of prison guard Davut Azak, who lost his life in the bombing Aug. 20.

Right after the incident, the BDPwas made a target, Demirtaş said. “They tried to lynch our party as if it were the perpetrator of the Gaziantep massacre. Whoever has put our party in the target connected to the Gaziantep massacre is ignominious. It is dishonorable to claim that this party takes pleasure from the death of children and babies. I condemn the massacre once more and express that all the pain suffered there is our pain.”Explaining the reason they did not participate in the ceremony for the victims of the Gaziantep attack, Demirtaş said, “Those lining up in front of Gaziantep funerals are all partners of war. We say the solution is in politics and brotherhood,” he said.

The families of two soldiers who were kidnapped by the PKK 20 days ago on the Bingöl highway also visited Demirtaş and asked that their children be released.