Per inadmissibility ruling made by the ECHR on 6th November 2003, seventy-year-old Yusuf Nergiz, who was living in the Ofis district of Diyarbakır, was taken into custody on 30th September 1997. After he was released on 2nd September 1997, he spent the night at the house of a friend of his, who was serving as the muhktar of a village in Diyarbakır; Yusuf Nergiz would have to go to the gendarmerie station to get permission to go to his village, to collect his belongings before heading home. The next day, when the mukhtar saw him on the street, Yusuf Nergiz told him that he would have to go back to the gendarmerie station, as the commander was not there when he had been there earlier in the morning. He had bought a bus ticket for his village. Later, Yusuf Nergiz disappeared. According to a village guard who was on the bus for which Yusuf had a ticket, he had been taken to a police station during an ID check on the way to the village and placed under detention, while the driver of the bus stated that Yusuf Nergiz had gotten off the bus with other passengers at a bus stop.

During the investigation, the police and the Kulp Gendarmerie Station reported that he had not been taken into custody.

In December 1997, his family applied to the ECHR, which found the case inadmissible on grounds that the authorities had conducted an effective investigation into Yusuf Nergiz’s disappearance.

The investigation into his disappearance is on-going.