The Secret Assassination List

"The  Bible publisher murders (in Malatya, in 2007) were planned well in advance. The brutal massacre of three Christian missionaries who operated the Zirve Publishing House in the city of Malatya in 2007 was planned in a highly calculated manner, according to documents found on a computer belonging to a suspect in the killings have revealed.

What happens when people get carried away?

"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 (an officer)-- 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.

" 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.

" It is not clear why Ergenekon or any other shady group inside the Armed Forces targeted Christian missionaries, but many coup plots that have been unearthed during the Ergenekon investigation and related trials now indicate that some groups inside these networks might have perceived missionaries as a threat.

" Observers have also recently suggested that extensions of Ergenekon and related structures are possibly still operative and currently very active. Recent attacks on elderly Armenians in İstanbul's Samatya neighborhood, threats directed at a protestant church in İzmir and the stoning of a Greek Orthodox church as of late might be the work of these same groups, many commentators note. Some also accuse the government of being negligent of the planned but foiled attacks against non-Muslims, and particularly missionaries, and therefore not actively encouraging prosecutors to investigate such crimes and bringing those behind them to justice."

Copied from Turkish Newspaper Zaman, Sturday, January 26, 2013