Turkey court attack suspect to appear before judge
ANKARA, May 21: The suspected Islamic activist behind a deadly attack on a Turkish court was set to appear before a judge on Sunday afternoon, along with three other alleged collaborators, Anatolia news agency reported.
The judge was expected to question the suspects and decide whether to jail them, pending trial.
Alparslan Arslan, a 29-year-old Istanbul lawyer shouted: “I’m a soldier of Allah” as he burst into Turkey’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, on Wednesday, killing a senior judge and wounding four others.
As he opened fire, he said he wanted to punish the judges for rulings upholding a ban on the Islamic headscarf in public institutions and universities in Muslim-majority but strictly secular Turkey.
The three others along with Arslan allegedly hurled hand grenades on the Istanbul office of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper earlier this month.
Two of them reportedly accompanied him in Ankara on the day of the court shooting.
Earlier, a senior prosecutor questioned also five other men detained over the shooting, but they were subsequently released, Anatolia reported.
The unprecedented attack sparked mass pro-secular protests and political tensions as the Islamist-rooted government faced accusations that its opposition to the headscarf ban and vocal criticism of court rulings had emboldened extremists.—AFP
