File 33 - Zübeyir Dündar

4 items

Supplementary materials pertaining to the case filed by Zübeyir Dündar on 3 March 1995 against the Republic of Turkey with the European Commission of Human Rights (application number 26972/95, referred to internally within the Kurdish Litigation Project as Case 26 and assigned to Bill Bowring as lead, later replaced by Anke Stock of the Kurdish Human Rights Project) regarding the unlawful killing of his mentally disabled son, Mesut Dündar, and the subsequent failure to carry out an effective investigation into the circumstances of the killing. Materials from the main casefile are located at A44/43/1/26.
Mesut Dündar was born in 1972 and suffered from meningitis. Zübeyir Dündar was unable to have his son treated and the son remained mentally disabled as a result. Mesut was always interested in Kurdish national music, poetry and colours and on many occasions used to walk in front of the crowd on Kurdish national holidays, carrying the Kurdish colours; yellow, red and green. These activities of attracted the attention of the police, who took to following him and, on occasions, raided his family home. Mesut was taken into custody three times, and on each such occasion he was beaten and tortured by the police.
In about July 1992, police officers from Cizre Police Headquarters raided Zübeyir Dündar’s home and told the applicant that they had come to take Mesut Dündar to Elazığ Psychiatric Hospital for treatment. They took the applicant and Mesut to the Police Headquarters. Mesut was terrified that he would be killed in the hospital and jumped out of a window and escaped. Thereupon the police officers took the applicant around Cizre town centre and neighbouring villages for three days, during which they unsuccessfully looked for Mesut. According to Zübeyir, he was beaten by the officers and was threatened with death if he did not find his son and hand him over to the police. The applicant was released at the end of the third day, only after having promised the police officers that if he saw his son he would bring him in himself. Mesut Dündar never returned home, instead staying with friends and telephoning the applicant's house every day in order to speak to his mother. The police often visited the applicant's house to ask about his son’s whereabouts. After some time, Mesut Dündar no longer telephoned and the police no longer came to the applicant's home. The applicant therefore began to suspect that the police had caught Mesut Dündar.
On 6 September 1992 Mesut Dündar's strangled body was found near the Şeyh Değirmenci watermill, near the Sulak village. A report of an interview with four women from Sulak, who had been taking yoghurt to the market in Cizre in the early hours of that day, and another person, was published in Özgür Gündem newspaper on 19 November 1992. According to this interview, four armed persons, one of whom was thought to be a police officer, had strangled Mesut Dündar while his arms were tied behind his back. Soldiers, who had come to the place where Mesut Dündar had been strangled following the killing, had dragged his body behind an armoured personnel carrier, claiming that they were doing so because they thought there might be a booby-trap under the body. The applicant's family heard at a later stage that Mesut Dündar's corpse was at the hospital. A member of the family went to the hospital where the body was handed over to him. The whole of Mesut Dündar's ribcage, throat and neck were covered in bruises. His face and eyes were dirty with mud and there were red spots and bruises in 34 places on his neck.
Zübeyir Dündar contacted the Prosecutor and asked him what had happened to his son. The Prosecutor told him that Mesut Dündar had been strangled. He did not take any statements from the applicant, nor did he ask the applicant whether he wished to start legal proceedings.
On 13 September 1994 the applicant and his family lodged a petition with the Cizre Prosecutor to find out whether there was an on-going investigation and what stage it had reached. The prosecutor had been friendly until the applicant mentioned the case of Mesut Dündar. The applicant was told by the Prosecutor's clerk that the case was closed. The applicant later discovered that the investigation was continuing.
On 20 September 2005, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that violations of Articles 2 (only with regards to the investigation of Mesut Dündar’s death, not the death itself) and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights had occurred but ruled that no violations of Articles 3 occurred. In its judgment, the Court noted that Mesut Dündar ‘s death occurred two months after he fled from police, and that the onus was on the applicant to prove that Mesut’s death was caused by agent of the State, to which he had provided no evidence. The Government were ordered to pay Zübeyir Dündar €10,000 in pecuniary damages, €3,500 in non-pecuniary damages, and €10,000 in costs and expenses. The full judgment is available for viewing at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-70160