Turkey blast: 15 alleged accomplices quizzed
Public prosecutors today began their interrogation of 15 alleged accomplices of last week’s Istanbul suicide bombers, amid signs of progress in the investigation into a suspected Islamic terror cell.
Istanbul city Governor Muammer Guler confirmed police had identified the man who rammed an explosive-packed pick-up truck into the city’s British Consulate and other ”culprits” in the attack.
Guler would not name the man. However the Istanbul newspaper Milliyet defied government reporting restrictions and identified him as Feridun Ugurlu, a Turk believed to have fought with Islamic radicals in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
“We’ve identified the culprits who carried out the attack on the British Consulate,” Guler said. “We’ve all details and we know their connections.”
Uniformed police escorted his suspected accomplices into a state security court for questioning by the state prosecutor, a procedure that usually leads quickly to the imposition of criminal charges.
The suspects covered their heads with jackets and coats as they arrived at the court. A police line held back a crowd of shouting relatives, which included several women wearing black chadors, the all-covering garment rare in Istanbul.
Milliyet said DNA tests had confirmed Ugurlu as the consulate bomber. Turkish media reports have said police have tentatively identified the other suicide bomber as Azad Ekinci, who also had links with Islamic radical groups.
Twin truck bombers killed 30 people – at least three of them Britons – on Thursday morning when they crashed into the British Consulate and the London-based HSBC bank.
The attacks coincided with a visit to London by US President George Bush. They came days after a similar double bombing against two Istanbul synagogues, killing 23.
Foreign and Turkish officials say the attacks bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaida network led by Osama bin Laden.
“The sophistication of these two attacks, the fact that there were multiple attacks, that they were timed to coincide with one another, certainly is consistent with the pattern we have seen in attacks launched by al-Qaida,” said Eric Edelman, the US ambassador to Turkey.
Those appearing in court were among 18 suspects held after Thursday’s attacks. The three others remained in custody at an Istanbul police station.
Turkish investigators spread out to the south-eastern city of Bingol, believed to be the home town of all four suicide bombers. The city is a hotbed of the Hezbollah radical Islamic group, which is separate from the Lebanese group of the same name.
Police examined the hard drives of 10 computers taken after the synagogue bombings from an Bingol Internet café that belonged to the brother of one of the suspected bombers, a local official said .
Experts speculate that Hezbollah may have been backed by Turkish authorities in the early 1980s to counter Kurdish separatists fighting a bloody insurgency against the military in the south-east.
Turkey now sees the group as a threat to the secular state and is investigating any links to al-Qaida.
Under government instructions, sermons in mosques around the country were to carry an anti-terrorism message at the start of the three-day religious holiday ending Ramadan tomorrow.
