Salih Dönen had joined the PKK in 1991 when he was 19 and had to return back after around two years due to an injury from his eyes. After two years of living as a fugitive and constant pressure to his family members by the authorities to do his military service, his family thought that it would be best for him to take a certificate of disability for discharge. He and his uncle Mehmet Sayim (Salim) Dönen, both living in the Mescit neighborhood of Silvan, went to the Military Draft Office in Diyarbakır on 9th February 1995. They did not return that night, nor in the following days, nor were there any news as to their whereabouts.

Their dead bodies were found in the Qurte (Yolarası) village on the road to Silvan on 21st February 1995. Both had been killed by torture and strangulation. Years later in 2008, Abdulkadir Aygan, a former member of JİTEM (Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Unit, a clandestine paramilitary unit under Gendarmerie Forces) confessed that the two men had been taken to the JİTEM headquarters from the hospital where the draft office had sent them in Diyarbakır, interrogated under torture and then killed. He later added that the 7 thousand Deutsche Mark found on them was given in part to a JİTEM worker who helped locate them, in addition to buying a TV set for the JİTEM Office.

The family insisted on an investigation but to no avail, nor did any other effective legal proceeding took place.