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- From: HQ.GGG@forsythe.stanford.edu (hq.ggg)
- Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
- Subject: From TRKNWS
- Date: 24 Jan 1993 09:41:20 -0800
- Organization: Stanford University
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- 1/24 Bomb Kills Turkish Journalist Ugur Mumcu
-
- ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- A car bomb on Sunday killed a
- left-wing Turkish columnist known for his investigation of
- the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope Paul II.
- The reporter, Ugur Mumcu, 50, was killed instantly by the
- bomb when he started his car outside his apartment in an
- upper-class residential district.
- Mumcu, a columnist for the Istanbul daily Cumhuriyet, was
- outspoken against Islamic fundamentalism and Kurdish
- separatism and was considered an expert on terrorism.
- A group calling itself the Islamic Salvation claimed
- responsibility for the bombing in anonymous telephone calls
- to newspapers. It was the first time such a group, described
- as fundamentalist, had been heard of.
- After the slaying, Premier Suleyman Demirel and several
- Cabinet members rushed to Mumcu's house to express their
- sympathy to his wife.
- "The killers will be found," Demirel said.
- His government is under fire for failing to apprehend the
- killers of other leading secularists, including another
- noted journalist and two professors, all slain in the past
- three years.
- Mumcu, a vigorous defender of secularism in Turkey, had
- reported receiving death threats from extremist Islamic
- groups.
- While 99 percent of Turkey's 57 million people are
- Muslim, the state is officially secular. But fundamentalist
- groups are demanding an Islamic state, and they have become
- more influential in recent years.
- Mumcu gained international fame with his books on the
- background of the assasination attempt on Pope John Paul II
- in Vatican City's St. Peter's Square in May 1981 by the
- right-wing Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca.
- Mumcu said the plot was linked to Bulgarian arms
- smugglers.
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