Local court seeks criminal investigation on Turkey's former chief of military staff

VAN (A.A) - July 21, 2011 - A court in eastern Turkey on Thursday accepted an appeal to launch a criminal investigation on the country's former chief of military staff for his suspected involvement in a bomb attack back in November 2005 in the southeastern town of Semdinli.
The court in Van province ordered the chief prosecutor's office to probe 71-year-old Yasar Buyukanit, the-then commander of the land forces, as well as three other retired senior officers over a grenade attack on a bookshop in Semdinli that killed one person. Several others were killed in the ensuing clashes between police and demonstrators who protested the attack.
In 2006, Van prosecutor Ferhat Sarikaya was expelled from office and disbarred for "exceeding the boundaries of his authority" when he prepared an indictment against Buyukanit, charging him of abusing his post and trying to set up an illegal organization to derail Turkey's European Union accession negotiations.
The suspects of the grenade attack were later revealed to be covert intelligence agents with the Turkish Gendarmerie Forces.
Sarikaya also accused Buyukanit of trying to influence courts by praising Ali Kaya, one of the three suspects, as "a very valuable soldier." 
The prosecutor also alleged that the grenade attack was an activity of the illegal organization, saying that order for the attack had directly come from commanders in Ankara, a claim which Buyukanit had rejected.