Witness crisis in Uğur Mumcu case: Mehmet Ağar could not be notified

The next hearing of the case known to the public as the "Hope Case", which covers 22 unsolved murders, including the assassinations of Uğur Mumcu, who lost his life in a bomb attack on January 24, 1993, and Muammer Aksoy, Bahriye Üçok and Ahmet Taner Kışlalı, will be held on Monday, May 12.

In the previous hearing of the ongoing case at the Ankara 5th High Criminal Court on January 16, Mumcu family lawyer Turgut Kazan requested that the then General Director of Security Mehmet Ağar be heard as a witness and this request was accepted. However, it was learned that the notification could not be delivered to Mehmet Ağar because he "could not be found at his address" and was returned. Therefore, it was stated that Mehmet Ağar is not expected to come to the hearing as a witness. If the court wishes, it can also decide to "bring" Mehmet Ağar "by force".

A decision was made to forcibly bring Ağar to justice in 2009 when he did not go to court in a case related to the Susurluk accident.

"PULL THE BRICK AND THE WALL WILL COLLAPSE"

According to the report in DW Turkish, Mumcu family lawyer Turgut Kazan, in addition to Ağar being heard as a witness in the previous hearing, also requested that a letter be written to the General Directorate of Security to investigate whether fugitive defendant Oğuz Demir, who allegedly planted the bomb in Uğur Mumcu's car, is in Türkiye. Kazan emphasized that there were unsolved murders in the three-year period from the killing of Uğur Mumcu to 1996, when the Susurluk accident occurred, and said, "The main hero of this period is Mehmet Ağar."

The petition submitted to the court included the meeting between Mumcu's wife Güldal Mumcu and Mehmet Ağar. It was stated that when Ağar, the then General Director of Security, said to Güldal Mumcu, "It's as if a wall is being built" during his condolence visit, Güldal Mumcu said, "Pull a brick, the wall will collapse" and Ağar said, "I can't pull a brick". In this context, the court accepted that Mehmet Ağar should be a witness in the case. However, according to the information obtained, the notifications could not be delivered.

The murder of Uğur Mumcu has still not been solved, despite 32 years having passed. The "Case of Hope" is based on a raid on a house belonging to the Hezbollah organization in Istanbul in early 2000. Following the seizure of information and documents, 22 unsolved murder cases were reopened. In the case opened following the investigation, it was alleged that the defendants had connections to the "Tevhid Selam Jerusalem Army" and "Islamic Movement" organizations.

Oğuz Demir, the fugitive who allegedly planted the bomb in Mumcu's car, managed to escape when he was about to be captured in an operation in 2000. It is also claimed that Demir was informed about the raid in advance.

The Mumcu family and their lawyers believe that Ağar has critical information about the unsolved murders in question because he was on active duty in the police force until 1993, at the General Directorate of Security between 1993 and 1996, and later at the Ministries of Justice and Interior.

Source: DW Turkish