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ANKARA, Aug 14 (AFP)-Seventeen Turkish Islamists went on trial here Monday for the murder of pro-secular intellectuals in a case in which Iran has been accused of providing defendants with training and weapons. The suspects, arrested in a police sweep in early May and now facing trial before the state security court, allegedly organized and committed the murders of four personalities in a bid to undermine Turkey's strictly secular order. The victims were Turkish scholar Muammer Aksoy, journalist Ugur Mumcu, former culture minister and journalist Ahmet Taner Kislali, and theologian Bahriye Ucok. In July, the Anatolia news agency reported that a Turkish prosecutor had accused Iran of providing the radicals with military training and weapons. An indictment demanding the death sentence for nine of the defendants said that a group within Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the Jerusalem Army, and Iran's intelligence organization Sawama trained Turkish radicals in military camps in Iran. The Jerusalem Army reportedly promotes exporting Iran's Islamic revolution to neighboring countries but Tehran has categorically denied the charges. Among those charged, Ferhan Ozmen has confessed to sending a lethal letter bomb to Ucok in 1990, and also to gunning down Aksoy. Ozmen, along with two other suspects, Necdet Yuksel and Oguz Demir, carried out the fatal bomb attack on Mumcu in 1993, according to the prosecution. Yuksel, together with Rustu Aytufan, allegedly planted a bomb made by Ozmen in Kislali's car in October 1999. In addition to the death penalty, jail terms of up to 22 years have been requested against six other suspects, and seven-and-a-half-year sentences against two more. The Turkish indictment said that the suspects, organized under the umbrella of the pro-Islamist Selam newspaper and Tevhid magazine, acted as the Jerusalem Army's instrument in Turkey. "The organization provided their elements in Turkey with weapons and ammunition," through couriers or international arms traffickers, Anatolia quoted prosecutor Hamza Keles as saying. The so-called Selam and Tevhid groups had close contacts with another Muslim organization, the Turkish Hizbullah, which authorities hold responsible for some 600 murders. In May, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said: "Some separatist groups in Turkey and others exploiting religion have benefited from Iran's hospitality or have used for themselves its tendency to export the revolution." |
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