Posted on 12/01/2003 10:13:14 PM PST by Destro
Istanbul bombers linked to Chechens
27.11.2003 - 19:15 By Ayla Jean Yackley
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's justice minister has been quoted as saying Chechens and Turks with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network helped prepare suicide bombs that killed dozens of people in Istanbul this month.
Cemil Cicek also said militants who bombed the British consulate and an office of the London-based HSBC bank last Thursday had narrowly evaded a pre-emptive attempt to arrest them after they were alerted to a planned police raid.
Ankara has said the November 20 bombing and attacks on two Istanbul synagogues five days earlier were carried out by Turks, but it has been investigating suspicions of al Qaeda links.
"It is now known who carried out the terror attacks and who aided and abetted them," Cicek told the Milliyet daily on Thursday. "Foreign connections have been established, they came and went to al Qaeda (camps). There are people with Chechen roots among them."
Cicek did not name the suspects or elaborate further. Eighteen people have been charged already over the attacks.
Many Turks trace their roots to the Caucasus and Istanbul is home to a sizeable number of exiled Chechens from there who are widely regarded as fellow Muslims fighting foreign oppression by Russians. Moscow has repeatedly criticised Ankara for tolerating what it regards as "Chechen terrorists" on its territory.
Moscow says Chechen rebels are closely linked to an "arc of instability" of Islamic militants stretching from the Philippines to the Middle East, though the guerrillas deny this.
Experts say up to 4,000 Turkish radicals have fought in conflicts overseas, including Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan, some training at al Qaeda camps that existed in Afghanistan before the U.S. invasion of the country two years ago in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States.
COFFINS FLOWN TO LONDON
Coffins wrapped in the British flag and carrying the bodies of Consul-General Roger Short and his assistant Lisa Hallworth were flown to Britain early on Thursday.
Short, Hallworth and another Briton were killed when a truck packed with explosives smashed through the consulate gates in a day of bombings that killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more.
The death toll from the synagogue bombings five days earlier stood at 29, deputy police chief Halil Yilmaz said on Thursday.
Cicek said police came close to seizing two men readying to attack the consulate and the bank building last week.
"Those who carried out the last two attacks escaped within an hour after receiving information and carried out these two abhorrent terror attacks," Cicek said.
He did not say where the information had come from.
Turkish authorities have lashed out at local media, accusing them of hampering the investigation by naming suspects connected with the synagogue bombings.
Nine more suspects were transferred to a state security court on Thursday for questioning, court officials said.
The court has already charged 18 people in connection with all four bombings, Yilmaz said in comments carried by the state Anatolian news agency. They are charged with belonging to and aiding and abetting an illegal organisation.
Homemade bombs comprised of ammonium nitrate were used in all of the attacks, Yilmaz said.
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