The villagers living in Kerşafe (Budaklı) village of Midyat county (Mardin province) were under pressure from local authorities to become village guards because children of 3 families in the village had joined the PKK. Soldiers working under the command of the Midyat Gendarme went to the village on May 14, 1995 and detained several villagers. While four of them were let go, the remaining four, namely Abdülkadir Demir, Hizni Bilmen, Mehmet Emin Atuğ and Şakir (Şükrü) Dilmen were not heard from ever again and are thought to have been shot by the Gendarme.

Due to the prevailing conditions of the state of emergency and the widespread gross human rights violations at the time, the families could only file a petition in 2003. Five years after the families submitted their request for an investigation, on March 3, 2008, they were told by the Midyat Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office that there was no evidence that these four individuals had disappeared. Nor were the applications of the families in search of the victims were accepted later. So the families eventually applied to the Mardin branch of the Human Rights Association for legal help.