Özcan Encü, relative of Roboski massacre victim detained!

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Funeral of the victims in Roboski village

In the early hours of Wednesday, around 2PM local time we received information from several sources that the Roboski village was being raided, and that house arrests were being made by Turkish security forces. At the time, we could not verify the information received because we were unable to directly speak to those in the village. The first person to use social networking to break the news was Bedel Boseli, who tweeted that people were being arrested, and youth were running away from the village to go into hiding.

As time went by, similar reports were echoed on social networking sites that, “The youth are running from the village” out of fear, and did not want to be arrested.

We recently highlighted the gruesome nature of the night-raid which killed 35 civilians, and the outrage it caused internationally by activists, which clearly illustrated the incompetence of Turkish intelligence, if they could not differentiate between rebel groups and teenagers smuggling food. Despite the killing, the deputy Prime Minister said in a statement that Turkey was not willing to issue an apology, but will be compensating the families for their loss.

The supposed-arrests made in Roboski village last night are unverifiable, but we can confirm that Özcan Encü, who lost two relatives in the night-raid was arrested earlier today. We encourage everyone to only send us information that they can verify, so that we don’t mislead people. If you have any information about arrests being made, or want to report an incident, please do get in touch with us.