VIP guards take lessons on poison protection

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

The General Directorate of Security has increased training for VIP bodyguards on assassination with poisoning.

The lessons on protection from poisoning have been intensified in the wake of claims that former President Turgut Özal, as well as several key international figures, have been killed via poison.

One of the instructors assigned to train VIP bodyguards, Fatih İnal, told Anatolia news agency that the lessons had been reviewed to include poisoning.

“Bodyguards need to be experts in guns, explosives and human psychology. We are training them in those areas. There is also the issue of the use of poisoning as an assassination tool. This was already a subject in our training courses, but we have further increased our focus,” İnal said.

“Our staff should be sensitive to chemical and biological weapons, as well as poisoning materials, since they can also be used in assassinations,” he added.

Özal died of heart failure in 1993 aged 65, at a time when he was engaged in efforts to end the Kurdish insurgency through dialogue. There have long been rumors that this initiative angered militants of the “deep state” within the Turkish establishment of the day, and that he may have been poisoned as a result.

In an autopsy last December, the Forensic Medicine Institute (ATK) did not find any evidence that Özal was poisoned, however the Ankara Chief Prosecution Office said the investigation would resume with the help of other findings.