Kurdish activists are threatening to kill an security guard involved in the shooting of Kurdish protesters at Israel's consulate in Berlin last month, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.
The Kurds have obtained a photograph of the Israeli guard, who is now back in Israel, and are distributing it to PKK branches and among Kurdish community leaders throughout Europe, the Yediot Ahronot daily reported, with the instruction that the guard "must pay with his life" for the four Kurds killed in Berlin.
Israel maintains that its consulate security guards opened fire on Kurdish protesters, who entered the building on February 17th, only in self-defence. An investigation by the Israeli Shin Bet security service concluded that the two guards who fired their weapons did so only as a last resort and in full accordance with standing orders.
German investigators, however, are not so sure. A preliminary report presented to a Berlin parliamentary committee yesterday raised doubts about whether all the Israeli gunfire could be justified, and the German prosecutor, Mr Hansjurgen Karge, said he would have sought to question the two guards were they not protected by diplomatic immunity.
Moreover, Mr Karge presented autopsy findings which showed that two of the four Kurds who died in the protest were hit from behind, one in the back, and one in the head. Although he said it was conceivable that the victims turned away just before being hit, their wounds did not correspond to "the classic self-defence situation".
Kurdish activists organised the protest amid rumours, vigorously denied in Jerusalem, that Israel had assisted in the capture of the Kurdish rebel leader, Mr Abdullah Ocalan, who now faces a possible death sentence in Turkey. According to yesterday's Israeli newspaper reports, Kurdish rebel leaders are adamant that the gunfire at the Berlin consulate, in which another dozen protesters were injured, was unjustified and must be avenged.
Although a Kurdish newspaper is said to have published the photograph of one of the Israeli guards, Yediot Ahronot chose to print only a blurred reproduction of the snap, in which the guard, wearing a grey jacket and blue-and-white patterned tie, cannot be clearly identified.
The deaths in the Berlin protest, and the ongoing recriminations, have led to raised fears of attacks on Israeli targets by Kurdish rebels. The confusion over what exactly happened on February 17th has also strained Israeli-German ties, with German prosecutors complaining at the hurried evacuation of the security guards back to Israel; raising questions about how many shots were fired and whether German police outside the building were endangered, and also disputing Israel's claim that one of its consular staff was taken hostage by the protesters.
AFP adds from Ankara: A provincial governor was seriously injured yesterday in a car-bomb attack in a central Turkish town which killed three people and wounded nine others, officials said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion, but the blast came after the Kurds vowed to step up their war against Ankara.