Several thousand people demonstrated this Saturday in Paris to claim responsibility for the murder ten years ago of three Kurdish activists and to demand clarifications for the attack against that community in the French capital on December 23, in which three more were killed.
The participants in the march, which had a clear political content and took place between the North Station and the Republic Square, carried banners with photographs of the victims, described as “martyrs”, and also of the leader of the Workers’ Party from Kurdistan, Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned in Turkey.
Turkey and, in particular, its secret services were very present in the banners, in the proclamations and in the speeches of a march that took place without incident and that was guarded by a strong security device of police and gendarmes.
The organizers and participants believe that the Turkish secret services are behind the shooting on the night of January 9-10, 2013 of Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Sylemez at the Kurdistan Information Center in the X arrondissement of Paris, at a few hundred meters from the North Station.
Investigators quickly apprehended the alleged perpetrator of the massacre, Omer Güney, a Turkish national, but he died of cancer in prison in late 2016 a few weeks before the trial that was expected to clarify whether the triple murder was commissioned and if there was a mastermind abroad.
The families of the women tried to relaunch the judicial procedure with a complaint in 2017 in which they provided elements that in their opinion demonstrated the responsibility of the Turkish intelligence services.
This thesis had been considered since the first investigation, but it has not given rise to any accusations and among the Kurdish community there is the impression that the French authorities have wanted to cover up any possible involvement of Ankara.
This was revived with the attack on December 23 in which three people were killed in front of the Kurdish cultural center and another three were injured in the same neighborhood of the X district next to the North Station.
On that occasion, the perpetrator – immediately arrested – was William Malet, a 69-year-old Frenchman with multiple criminal records who had been released from jail a few days earlier and who was charged with attacking an immigrant camp in 2021.
Malet is back in jail, charged with racist murders, although investigators have found no connection to extremist organizations.
The protesters this Saturday on their banners demanded “Truth and Justice” while showing their discontent with the progress of the investigations with direct criticism: “France, country of the rights of the Turkish secret services.” EFE
