Suspect: "Kaplan and his friends said they have links to the deep state"

Suspect: "Kaplan and his friends said they have links to the deep state"
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According to a disclosed statement of a suspect, another suspect who allegedly organized the deadly attack previously boasted of "having links to the deep state."

A suspect in the case of the murder of five people in Turkey's Kurdish-majority province of Mardin reportedly told the prosecution that one of the other suspects who coerced him into collaboration earlier threatened him and said "they have links to the deep state."

Five people from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) were killed in the district of Artuklu on 19 January by gunmen who stopped their car and shot them in cold blood.

Abdullah Salih (39), Waheda Haedar Jasim (63) and Abdullah Saleh Mustafa (69) died at the scene, and Chiman Shaheen Khalid (75) and Ahmed Jalaladeen Ibrahim (45) later died in the hospital.

Statements by suspects in the case were disclosed by Turkish news agency DHA on Tuesday.

One of the suspects, Faris Akseven, said at the prosecutor's office that he had been previously subjected to threats by one of the other suspects, Abdullah Kaplan, and that he had been extorted money amounting to 400,000 TL (approximately $21,100) by Kaplan and his friends.

Akseven also claimed that Kaplan had twice "exploded gas cylinders" in the city of Nusaybin, and threatened him by saying he would do the same at Akseven's house."

Whatsapp message: "Make sure you have at least two corpses"

"They said they had links to the deep state," Akseven added. "I received these messages on Whatsapp from Kaplan's mobile phone. He sent me the locations of my son. He threatened me saying he could harm my children. I arrived in Turkey a day before the incident. The next morning I received a Whatsapp message from a person who identified himself as Tolga, using Kaplan's phone to send the message. It said, 'You will rob somebody from Iraq.' When I asked Kaplan about the message, he told me that he received the same. 'Make sure that you have at least two corpses,' the message said."

Akseven stated that the car and gun they used in the deadly incident were provided by Kaplan, that he did not know the other two suspects, and that Kaplan shot at least two of the victims:

"He told me to wave at the driver to stop. I did as he said, and the vehicle stopped. I approached the driver when he got out. Abdullah came and he first shot the driver. He then fired another round into the car."

Akseven also admitted to having worked as a night guard in the housing estate in KRI's Duhok governerate where the victims lived, but claimed that the he did not know them or previously meet them.