Vedat Aydın
person- Image
- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Married
- Date body found
- Jul 7, 1991
- Occupation
- Human rights defender
- Event description
Per ECHR’s inadmissibility ruling and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey’s 2012 report on statute of limitations, Vedat Aydın was a thrity-eight-year-old political activist from the Kürthacı village of Diyarbakır’s Bismil district. As a political activist, he was not a stranger to prison and political detention. He spent four months in prison for making a speech in Kurdish at the general assembly of the IHD in 1990 as the head of the Diyarbakır branch of the association. About a month after being elected as the provincial chairman of HEP’s (People’s Labour Party) Diyarbakır branch, on 5th July 1991, he was taken from his house by three plain-clothes men carrying guns and walkie-talkies, who introduced themselves as police officers. His dead body was discovered on 7th July 1991 in Elazığ.
His family applied to the ECHR, which found the case inadmissible citing the six-month time limit for applications on grounds that the family should have realized long before 1998 that domestic remedies were ineffective.
After widely publicized claims made by ex-PKK-members-turned-JİTEM-employees about murder victims, including Vedat Aydın, in 2009 the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a court case against a group of sixteen defendants comprised of soldiers, ex-PKK members, village guards and civil servants. The case was transferred between various courts due to dispute over jurisdiction, with almost no concrete development. As of 2013, the case is being presided by a civilian court.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 37.9249733
Longitude: 40.2109826
- Geolocation
- City
- Diyarbakır
- Date of disappearance
- Jul 5, 1991
- Year of disappearance
- 1991
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:38
- Status of the victim
- Discovered dead and returned to the family
- Type of source material
- ECHR decision
- Press release or report of human rights organisations
- Printed or online news
- Statement by victim/complainant
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Unknown
- Verdict of ECHR
- Non-compliance with the six-month time limit
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Per ECHR’s inadmissibility ruling and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey’s 2012 report on statute of limitations, after the discovery of the Diyarbakır chairman of HEP (People’s Labour Party) Vedat Aydın’s body on 7th July 1991, two days after being taken from his home by men introducing themselves as police officers, the Ministry of Interior declared, in a written statement, that the men in question were not members of the security forces. His family was invited to the police station for their testimony shortly later. However, in 1998, when they submitted a written request to the Elazığ State Security Court they were informed that the investigation into Aydın’s murder was still pending. Upon this development, they applied to the ECHR, which found the case inadmissible on grounds that the family should have realized long before 1998 that domestic remedies were ineffective, citing the six-month time limit for applications.
After widely publicized claims made by ex-PKK-members-turned-JİTEM-employees about murder victims, including Vedat Aydın, in 2009 the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a court case against a group of sixteen defendants comprised of soldiers, ex-PKK members, village guards and civil servants. The case was transferred between various courts due to dispute over jurisdiction, with almost no concrete development. As of 2013, the case is being presided by a civilian court.