Police have found a large number of documents that serve as evidence of how the murders were premeditated over a long period of time on a computer seized from the house of gendarmerie intelligence officer Maj. Haydar Yeşil -- one of the suspects in the Zirve trial. The hard drive of the computer includes video footage of the victims, phone conversation recordings belonging to them and a chart that details the organizational structure of Christian missionaries in Malatya.
Victims Necati Aydın and Tilman Geske, a German citizen, had been tagged by the criminal network months prior to the murder, the documents on the computer show. In addition to Geske and Aydın, there is detailed information, complete with pictures and video recordings, of US citizen Ronal Lolgal and Zirve publishing employee Hüseyin Yelki. These individuals were shown on a document supposedly revealing a “missionary organization chart,” created inside the gendarmerie. Some of the photographs found on the hard disk are from Geske's funeral. The killers also had a list of missionaries residing in Turkey with personal information such as their passport numbers and detailed information about their families and residential addresses. Police have established that the documents were created by different members of the Gendarmerie Command in Malatya.
The documents confirm the assertion of co-plaintiff lawyers in the trial that began four years ago that the gendarmerie was actively involved in the killings. The murders are believed to be part of a general plot targeting missionaries, devised either by Ergenekon -- a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government -- or a related organization. Evidence that came out in the trials regarding the 2007 murder of journalist Hrant Dink, the 2006 killing of Father Santoro, an Italian pastor, in Trabzon and other attacks on non-Muslims shows that they are also likely to have come from the same master plan. Prosecutors and lawyers in these trials have found evidence linking these events to each other.
Another police finding was that there was a briefing on the slain missionaries at the Malatya Provincial Gendarmerie Command where a slide presentation was used. During the briefing at the gendarmerie command, detailed information and intelligence work conducted in the city on the missionaries was also given to the gendarmerie officials.
Prosecutors believe that the campaign against missionaries in Malatya and other parts of Turkey was launched by a clandestine and illegal unit called the National Strategies and Operations Department of Turkey (TUSHAD), allegedly established in 1993 by former four-star Gen. Hurşit Tolon, who is one of the key suspects in the Ergenekon trial. Last week, the Malatya court hearing the Zirve trial ordered Tolon's arrest based on the evidence found on the computer at Yeşil's office.
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