ISTANBUL
Stephen Shah Kaczynski, a 52-year-old British national, has been formally charged with being a member of an illegal leftist organization involved in the killing of a Turkish prosecutor in an Istanbul courthouse last March.
The indictment prepared by an Istanbul prosecutor - and accepted by the court late Wednesday - also charges Kaczynski with “resisting police”.
If convicted on both charges, Kaczynski could serve a maximum of 20 years in jail.
Along with Kaczynski - who is in Istanbul’s Maltepe prison awaiting trial - 19 other defendants will appear before the Penal Court in the coming days on the same the charges.
Kaczynski was taken into custody on April 2 after Istanbul police raided 38 different locations in the city’s Okmeydani district. He was remanded in custody on April 4 by an Istanbul court.
The raid came after a deadly hostage situation in March - for which members of the banned Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, claimed responsibility.
A Turkish prosecutor - 46-year-old father-of-two Mehmet Selim Kiraz - was killed after DHKP-C gunmen gained access to Istanbul’s Caglayan court complex.
Kaczynski has denied the charges and claims he was at an Istanbul cultural center where he was due to spend the night.
“I arrived in Istanbul last February and stayed in the city to participate in the Social Rights Symposium in April. I went to the cultural center to spend the night. As I was sleeping, I heard noises from outside of the center. I was taken into custody by police and I did not show any resistance,” he said, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges the DHKP-C used the cultural center as a front to recruit new members.
The DHKP-C was founded in 1978. Supporting a Marxist-Leninist ideology, it was mostly active during the Cold War era.
Since then, it has revived attacks in Turkey; on Aug. 10, two members of the group opened fire at the high-security U.S. Consulate-General building in Istanbul.
Targeting security officials, high-profile politicians and carrying out suicide bombings, the DHKP-C is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
