Suspect in murder of Turkey’s leading businessman to be tried in Belgium

ISTANBUL

A Belgian court ruled for the trial of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) member Fehriye Erdal on May 25.

According to the ruling by the Bruges court, Erdal will be tried in Belgium over crimes she committed in Turkey.

Erdal is one of the suspected accomplices in the 1996 assassination of the former head of one of Turkey’s top family-owned industrial conglomerates, Sabancı Holding, Özdemir Sabancı.

Erdal was captured in Belgium in 1999 but she was later released. Turkey is still seeking her extradition as her precise whereabouts remain a mystery.

Meanwhile, İsmail Akkol, one of the other suspected accomplices in the assassination, was detained in February in the Aegean province of Aydın at a bus station after two decades on the run.

The third DHKP-C militant, Mustafa Duyar, the only person convicted in the case, was killed in prison in 1999 while serving a life sentence.