Paris: A TURKISH national charged with murdering three female Kurdish rebels in Paris died, a French judicial source said yesterday, before his case came to trial.
Omer Guney died at a hospital in Paris following a battle with a serious brain illness, the source said.
He was the only suspect sent for trial, scheduled to start next month, on charges of “murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise” over killings of the three women, including Sakine Cansiz.
Cansiz—one of the founders of outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) —was murdered along with Fidan Dogan, 28, and 24-year-old Leyla Soylemez.
The women’s bodies were found on January 10, 2013 at a Kurdish information centre. They had been shot in the head and neck.
Guney denied involvement in the killings, though investigators said they had surveillance footage of him entering the crime scene and one of the victim’s DNA was allegedly found on his coat.
Lawyers for the victims’ families spoke of their anger at being “denied a public trial which they had been waiting for almost four years”.
