Rojbin Kaçan/JINHA

MÊRDÎN - A Turkish military commander, notorious for the rapes and killings of civilians that took place under his watch in Kurdistan, has now been promoted and reassigned to the region. Women survivors of Musa's rule say they hope that one day he will be tried.

Turkish military officer Musa Çitil became notorious for the extrajudicial assassinations, rapes and sexual harassment that his soldiers perpetrated under his command in Northern Kurdistan (in Turkey) during the 1990s. Victims and survivors brought several legal suits against Musa, but Turkish courts let him go free in a legal process criticized by the European Court of Human Rights. Now, military officials have promoted Musa to major general and reassigned him to Kurdistan. He will serve as the regional commander in the largely Kurdish province of Diyarbakır.

Musa's most notorious crimes took place when he was in charge of the regional military police command in the Dêrik region of Mardin province. In 1993, 13 residents of a local village were assassinated in the area under his command. In 1993 and 1994, his soldiers repeatedly arrested and raped a local woman, who eventually came forward. However, the charges were dropped. JINHA spoke with women in the Dêrik region about what they experienced.

40-year-old Hediye Çeviren recalled the day in 1993 when soldiers raided their village of Xîrar. Soldiers killed Hediye's husband, father, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and father-in-law. They then destroyed the house using explosives and arrested the remainder of the household.

"Musa Çitil was the captain for Dêrik at the time. He was the one who carried out this massacre," said Hediye. "They brutally killed our husbands and children; then they said 'we killed terrorists.'" Musa was acquitted of ordering the massacre.

"As if it wasn't enough, they made him the regional commander for Diyarbakır," said Hediye. "We wanted to see these people tried. We were expecting to see them punished and removed from their posts, but instead they promoted them and made them responsible for the region." Hediye said that she did not want to see her remaining children, who grew up fatherless since that day, live in fear of also being killed by Musa Çitil.

Fatma Erek, 42, described the day that soldiers raided the village. They took her husband away. For hours, she waited for news from him, but soldiers refused to say where they had taken them. Fatma had recently given birth to her third child. The next morning, she got the news that her husband had been killed.

"The world fell down around me. I had no idea what me and my three children would do," said Fatma. Soldiers refused to surrender the bodies of her husband and the two other family members killed that day.

Fatma said that she was devastated by the news that Musa Çitil had been reassigned to the region. "But we will fight until Musa Çitil is tried. Sooner or later, those who persecute us in our own land will be tried."

Fatma Çeviren, 80, said that the soldiers took away her son that day. Then, the soldiers then forced her to lie down in the snow. She never saw him again. Soldiers killed several of her children.

"I went to identify my children and I couldn't recognize them," she said. "I hope that those who put us through this pain will go before a court one day and be tried."

(gc/cm)