Retired Gen. Hurşit Tolon, who was named the prime suspect in an additional indictment prepared in June into the 2007 Zirve Publishing House murders, did not attend the 40th hearing of the trial in Malatya on Monday, citing health reasons.
The trial is being heard at the Malatya 3rd High Criminal Court.
Prosecutors are seeking two life sentences without possibility of parole for Tolon, a former 1st Army Corps commander, who is currently under arrest as part of the case into Ergenekon, a clandestine criminal network that has alleged links within the state and is suspected of plotting to topple the government. There are 19 suspects in the second indictment of the case.
The indictment accuses the suspects of inciting murder, establishing a terrorist organization and membership in it and working to overthrow the government. Among the suspects are retired Col. Mehmet Ülger, who served as Malatya Provincial Gendarmerie brigade commander in 2007, Maj. Haydar Y., non-commissioned officer Abdullah A., Sgt. Mehmet Ç. and Ruhi A., an instructor at İnönü University’s department of theology.
On April 18, 2007, Christians Necati Aydın (35) and Uğur Yüksel, along with German national Tilmann Ekkehart Geske (46) were tied to their chairs, stabbed and tortured at the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya before their throats were slit. The publishing house printed Bibles and Christian literature. Suspects Abuzer Yıldırım, Cuma Özdemir, Salih Gürler and Hamit Çeker were apprehended at the scene and immediately taken into custody, while another suspect, Emre Günaydın, jumped from a third-storey window in an attempt to escape from the police and was taken into custody after being treated for injuries.
The indictment also states that the Zirve murders were carried out as part of the Cage Action Plan, a subversive plot allegedly devised by military officers that sought to undermine the government through assassinations and other acts of terror against non-Muslims in Turkey. The Cage plan was allegedly drawn up on the orders of Ergenekon. Cage plan documents specifically call the killings of Armenia-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro and the Zirve murders an “operation.”
An anti-democratic group within the Naval Forces Command behind the Cage plan had intended to foment chaos in society with those murders but complained that the plan had failed when large segments of society protested against the killings in mass demonstrations
