ASSASSINS TRAINED IN ISTANBUL

"I don't know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done is carry a pistol into a movie."
~ Lee Harvey Oswald.

More on Turkey's meddling in South Kurdistan . . .

Zanetî has an excellent summary of Turkish involvement with the recent murder of 525 Yezîdî Kurds in Şengal, near the Syrian border, on 15 August. The president of South Kurdistan, Mesûd Barzanî, went so far as to call out Turkey and Syria for their cooperation with Sunni Arabs against the Kurdish people.

Now Özgür Gündem has an article describing the training of Turkmen assassins and their operations in South Kurdistan. According to Özgür Gündem, an ex-assassin, Muhammet Sait Ali, confessed some important information regarding the murder of the 525 Yezîdî Kurds in Şengal.

Sait Ali was caught in Kerkuk,where he confessed that he was trained in Istanbul, at the police station headquarters in Vatan Street. Iraq's regional neighbors--Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt--even though they have their own disagreements over many matters, come together easily to cooperate against the Kurds.

The most recent example of this is their cooperation against the Kerkuk Referendum. In order to suffocate the Kurdish movement and to sabotage the Kerkuk Referendum, they have organized several suicide attacks against Mûsil, Kerkuk, Maxmur, and Hewlêr. The groups that attacked as suicide bombers were trained in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and are financially supported by them.

Now, we can add Turkey to the list of suicide bomb trainers in addition to its well-earned reputation as a state-sponsor of terror.

According to Sait Ali, an ethnic Turkmen, Turkish MİT trained 44 Turkmen as assassins at the Vatan police headquarters. It was these who were sent to ply their new trade in South Kurdistan. According to the documents received, 12 of the Turkmen assassins were sent to Kerkuk, 8 to Hewlêr, 4 to Silêmanî, and 20 to Baghdad. As Sait Ali stated:

"On 19 February 2006, they sent me to Ankara, and on the second day they sent me to Istanbul. They gave me the nickname of "Zeki." We were 44 people. MIT gave us assassination training. We didn't know each other. They took us to a building in Vatan Street, and gave us sniper and handgun training."

According to Ali, retired generals trained them:

"We were 44 guys and everyone had a nickname so that no one knew who the other was. However, it was obvious that the people who were training us were very knowledgeable and sufficient people. The training was given on behalf of MIT, but it wasn't official. They told us to get trained very well, but after leaving the building, to forget about all the people we had met. They warned us not to reveal their identities."

A Canadian passport was found on Sait Ali's person when he was detained in Kerkuk. He also carried several letters with him that had been sent from Syria. According to the letters, Turkey and Syria are cooperating in order to create chaos in South Kurdistan. Ali says that Syria has an enormous influence on ex-Ba'ath supporters and trained the Ba'ath Arabs, while Turkey trained Turkmen, so that both Syria and Turkey could enhance their intelligence web.

In addition, Sait Ali mentioned that arms supplies come from Turkey and Syria. Syria is making things easier for Turkey to operate in South Kurdistan by using its influence over Sunni Arabs in Kerkuk and Mûsil. That's why the Turkish intelligence agents that staff the so-called Turkish "consulate" in Mûsil are able to move about freely in extremely dangerous areas, while residents of all ethnicities must take extreme care to move about in the city and surrounding areas.

Turkey is supplying arms to the intelligence staff in Iraq through Syria and Iran, either transported by train or in large trucks--which reminds us of the train that had been derailed by HPG gerilas at the end of May. There are links to HPG's derailing operation in yesterday's post.

As Sait Ali said:

"We get most of our arms from ex-Ba'athist or Turkmen parties, and they help us."

It kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it, where the propaganda is coming from that supplies Arab bloggers with wild suppositions such as the one that blames "Kurdish warlords" of being the masterminds behind the murder of the Şengal Yezîdîs. Meanwhile, Yezîdîs themselves know that the attack was the work of those who don't want stability in the region and don't want Kurds to have any kind of freedom.

Don't forget to check Hevallo. He has some photos of Kurdish refugees fleeing Iranian bombs and invasion, as well as a video of life among HPG/YJA-STAR gerîlas. That video clip comes from a longer documentary that had been available on Google last year, until it was "disappeared."