Turkey charges suspected tycoon killer after 20 years at large

Akkol has been wanted for 20 years over killing of Ozdemir Sabanci, head of one of Turkey's largest industrial empires

ISTANBUL: A Turkish court on Thursday charged a radical left-wing militant over the 1996 assassination of a top industrialist after the suspect was caught allegedly plotting an attack, local media said.

Ismail Akkol of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) was detained on Tuesday with another militant on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing in the capital Ankara.

Police later said Akkol had been wanted for 20 years over the killing of Ozdemir Sabanci, then the billionaire head of one of Turkey's largest industrial empires. A court in Istanbul remanded Akkol in custody, the Dogan news agency said, without specifiying the charges against him.

Akkol told the court that he had been told by police that he would most likely be "executed in jail", it said. Sabanci was killed along with his secretary and another colleague in an attack on the Istanbul headquarters of Sabanci Holding in January 1996 that was blamed on the Marxist DHKP-C.

Akkol and another suspect fled the country. Fehriye Erdal, a female DHKPC member, was captured in Belgium in 1999 but later released and Turkey is still seeking her extradition. Another militant, Mustafa Duyar, was murdered in prison while serving a life sentence over the Sabanci killing, the only person convicted in the case.

Akkol and another man were arrested at a bus station in the western town of Soke on Tuesday, carrying weapons, explosives, ammunition and fake IDs. Dogan quoted police sources as saying that the pair had been planning a suicide attack in Ankara.

Turkey has been on high alert for months following a series of attacks blamed on the Islamic State group, most recently a suicide bombing in January that killed 11 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul.

In October, 103 people were killed in double suicide bombings at a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara, the deadliest attack in Turkey's modern history. The DHKP-C has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last few months.

It is classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union and is vehemently anti-US, anti-Nato, and anti-Turkish establishment.