Turkey: Student killed in extrajudicial execution

On 4 July 1995 Serdar Ugras, a 20-year-old university student, was shot dead by members of the Special Operations Team in front of his father in his home town of Nusaybin in southeast Turkey. They pretended that this happend as part of a clash between the security forces and armed members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). In fact, the unarmed student had been detained the day before in a nearby town, was brought back to his home, and apparently killed in the street outside by machine-gun fire and a final single shot to the head. His father, whose testimony is given here, was detained by the security forces for a further 26 days and was reportedly warned not to make any statement about what had happened. Other members of the family were also detained and allegedly subjected to ill-treatment, apparently for reporting the killing to the media.