13 March 2006

BRUSSELS — A report from the Belgian ambassador in Turkey has poured cold water on suspicions that the death of the parents of Kurdish activist Derwish Ferho was the work of a death squad.

The confidential report has been handed over to Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht who has confirmed its findings to newspaper 'De Morgen'.

De Gucht had previously criticised Flemish Foreign Minister Geert Bourgeois for suggesting that the murder of Derwish Ferho's parents could be a form of state terror. Bourgeois had demanded an investigation.

Ferho — who fled Turkey years ago as a political refugee — is the head of the Kurdish Institute in Brussels. It was feared that the violent death 
 
of his parents might have been in retaliation for his activist work.

However, the Belgian ambassador in Turkey suspects the murders were the work of local village guards. The embassy also stressed that Turkey has made good progress on human rights in recent years.
  
One of the embassy's workers visited the Kurdish region of Turkey where the murders took place and spoke with the opposition party DTP. The DTP also raised doubts about the possibility that a state-backed death squad carried out the killings.

The 85-year-old Ferho and 81-year-old Fatim Akgül were brutally killed at the start of March in the village of Mizizah, in Turkish Kurdistan.

The Kurdish Institute in Brussels then claimed the couple was killed by death squads linked to the Turkish Interior Ministry and local security services in retaliation for the "anti-Turkish activities" of their two sons, who fled to Belgium years ago as political refugees.

But the report said: "There is little reason to believe that the murder was the work of a death squad, such as Ferho hinted at".

[Copyright Expatica News 2006]
Subject: Belgian news