On Sept. 28, 1999, Mehmet Arıcı was tending his goat herd in the Öveç pasture in Hakkâri’s, Şemdinli town. He was detained by soldiers of the first and second battalions of the Kayseri 1st Mountain Commando Brigade. The soldiers took Mehmet Arıcı to the same place where they were also detaining 5 men from Iraq in addition to Muhsin Güngör. There the soldiers stripped naked all men, took whatever money, ID, watches etc. that belonged to them. The seven men were later seen by two witnesses, hands tied, being walked towards Güzelkonak by the soldiers.

The same day Mehmet Arıcı’s home was searched by soldiers but nothing illegal found.

The seven men, enforced to disappear never came home.

The villagers and the village headman went to look for the seven men on Sept. 30, 1999. They found the dead bodies of the seven men, laid one on top of the other near Güzelkonak’s Ayıyatağı hillside.

Şemdinli Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation concerning the case. However, on Nov. 15, 1999, seeing that the perpetrators were soldiers of the Kayseri Commando Battalion, decided on rejection of venue. After going through various military and non-military channels, the case on the domestic front ended without any results whatsoever. The families, then, applied to the European Court of Human Rights.

The ECHR joined two cases from the Arıcı (2004) and Güngör (2005) families. It decided that article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated and asked the government to complete, speedily, pre-trial proceedings and achieve results concerning the payment of compensation.

The domestic courts decided there was no case for the payment of compensation to the kin of the victims.