The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Referring to the case of Mr. Mehmet Sinçar, a former member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/187/12(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 186th session (April 2010),

Recalling that Mr. Sinçar, a member of Kurdish origin of the Grand National Assembly elected in 1991, was shot dead at close range in September 1993 in Batman, where he had gone to attend the funeral of a member of the Democracy Party Bureau assassinated in August 1993, and that in October 2006 the Turkish authorities reported that the persons initially suspected of the murder - members of a terrorist group - had all been acquitted for want of evidence, except two persons who were at large,

Recalling that in 2008 the Turkish IPU Group reported that a criminal case regarding Mr. Sinçar's murder was pending before the 6th Assize Court of Diyarbakir, that this Court had ordered the Court of Kiziltepe, where Mr. Sinçar’s family resides, to hear the family’s members as they had been unaware that a case was under way and that Mrs. Sinçar has meanwhile joined the proceedings as a claimant,

Considering that according to the information provided by the President of the Turkish IPU Group on 1 October 2010, two persons, Rifat Demir and Cihan Yildiz were found guilty of the murder of Mr. Sinçar and sentenced to life imprisonment; noting that  Mr. Sinçar’s family has appealed against this sentence as it is not satisfied with the verdict for the following reasons: the two convicts and a third suspect who died in detention, are being held responsible for the many murders that occurred in the south-eastern part of Turkey in the 1990s and have to date not been elucidated; in their view, it is not credible that two or three persons committed all those murders; they refer in this regard to statements made in August 2010 by retired Turkish Admiral Atilla Kiyat, in interviews with the TV channel Habertürk, that the assassinations during the period 1993-1997 were “State policy” to combat terrorism, calling on the President, the Prime Ministers and the Chief of the General Staff at the time to tell the truth; the family states that, while the convicts may well be the perpetrators of Mr. Sinçar’s assassination, they want the instigators of this crime to be punished,

1. Thanks the President of the Turkish IPU Group for the information provided;

2. Notes that two persons were convicted, inter alia for the murder of Mr. Sinçar and that the family has lodged an appeal against the sentence;

3. Considers it indeed essential that full light be shed on the murder of Mr. Sinçar and consequently requests the Committee to continue following this case and to report to it at its next session, to be held on the occasion of the 124th IPU Assembly (April 2011), on developments in the appeal proceedings.

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