Demolition of the police station in Bismil district of Amed (Diyarbakir) began in 2021. During the demolition work, human bones were found under the building.

Workers who carried out the demolition work delivered the human bones to the Parks and Gardens Department. After the discovery of human bones, demolition was halted, and the area was cemented with concrete.

BONES SECRETLY BURIED BY AN IMAM

According to the information received, some locals called the mayor of Bismil, Orhan Ayaz, and asked what happened to the bones, yet the government-appointed mayor did not give any information on the issue.

An eyewitness, who wanted to remain anonymous, said that the Parks and Gardens Department delivered the bones to a municipality employee imam in a cardboard box and that the bones were secretly buried by the imam in another place.

The eyewitness added that the bones were very likely to belong to the victims of unsolved murders in the notorious 1990s.

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE IN BISMIL

Many unsolved murders were executed by JİTEM, a special unit of the Turkish gendarmerie charged with "intelligence gathering and counterterrorism”, and Hezbollah between 1992 and 1994 in the Bismil district of Amed. No information has been received from many people who were kidnapped by the JİTEM-Hezbollah counter forces during those years.

The official documents prepared by the Lice Central Gendarmerie Command at that time and emerged in the 2000s, reveal that many villagers in Bismil were blacklisted for allegedly being related to the PKK. 13 people on the list were either disappeared or murdered in 1992 and the following years.

BONES MAY BELONG TO PEOPLE KILLED DURING JITEM COMMANDER CURAL'S TERM OF OFFICE

Bismil Commando Battalion Commander Captain İzzet Cural, who organized the JİTEM and Hezbollah murders in Bismil, forced dozens of families to migrate, and burned down many houses and villages. While tens of thousands of people were tortured and subjected to inhumane practices in Bismil in the 1990s, the whereabouts of many citizens who were detained during those years is still unknown. Their bones have not even been found.

13 UNSOLVED MURDERS

The names of the people who were killed or disappeared after being detained between 1988 and 1994 in Bismil are as follows: Abdülkadir Kurt, Muhlis Akbulut, Arap Güven, İsmail Tunç, Özeyir Kurt, Musa Koluman, Şehmus Yüksel and Turgut Yenisoy, Mahmut Çakmak, Şehmus Çelik, Cahit Özalp, Salhattin Akbulut and Sadık Kortak.

While the mortal remains of İsmail Tunç and Arap Güven were found in the Bismil Sanayi Cemetery, no information could ever be obtained about the fate of eleven other people.