ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – On December 28, 2011, 34 suspected smugglers were killed in Turkish airstrikes near the town of Roboski, southeastern Turkey. As the seventh anniversary of the massacre approaches, human rights lawyers are determined to reopen the case. Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) recently established a committee to investigate the facts and look for ways to reactivate the case after the European Court of Human Rights threw out an appeal on the initial verdict in May this year. Raji Biliji, deputy head of Diyarbakir’s branch of the Human Rights Group in Turkey, told Rudaw the decision was political. “There were some technical problems with the [case] dossier. These problems are taken as excuses to neglect the case. It is possible lawyers might have made a mistake in the dossier. But this doesn’t mean you have to ignore a case because of a mistake in its dossier. This is the fault of Turkish courts and that of the European Court of Human Rights,” he added. Relatives of the dead called on then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to refer the case to a civilian court. Turkey’s public prosecutor investigated the incident under the title ‘death due to negligence’ and closed the case in June 2013, referring it to a martial court. “The Turkish army has not been negligent,” the Turkish military court ruled, suspending its investigation of five officers. Following this decision, 1,100 lawyers submitted requests to the constitutional court about the case, but they were all rejected owing to problems with the case file. Lawyers then took the case to the Europe Court of Human Rights, which rejected the case because of a lack of evidence, delays, and a shortage of testimonies from relatives. “Murder is a crime everywhere in the world and the state is supposed to track down the murderer and reveal the way a crime is committed and try the accused too. In the case of Roboski, the state is responsible for finding the perpetrator and handing him over to the court,” Mohammed Amin Aktar, former head of syndicate of lawyers in Diyarbakir, told Rudaw. The young men, who were smugglers, appear to have been mistaken for Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters. Smuggling is a main source of revenue for villagers in provinces along the Iraqi border, with many of locals involved in transporting fuel, cigarettes and other goods from Iraqi Kurdistan’s villages on the other side of the border.
