To Our People and the Public Opinion

In an incident that took place on Bingol-Cat road in 2005, Malazgirt former district president Ihsan Bertal had lost his life. As a result of our Headquarters Command’s investigations and enquiries into the incident, it had occurred as:

During the summer of 2005 in the Cavres region, one of our units had decided to attack the Turkish army. Our forces had decided to realize the attack at night. Military convoys belonging to the Turkish army often used the mentioned route had been targeted to be attacked in an ambush.

Our action unit had laid an ambush near the road. Between 21.00 and 22.00 hours at night a military convoy had entered the ambush area. Our unit had implemented its action plan by mainly targeting the last two vehicle in the military convoy. However, later it was realized that the last two vehicles in the convoy were to be of civilians’. And it was identified that Ihsan Bertal who was in one of these vehicles had lost his life and his friend next to him was injured.

There had been no intention in this incident. It had been totally a coincidence, an incident that had been occurred as a result of carelessness and misfortune. Ihsan Bertal who had lost his life in the incident was a patriotic democrat worked for the Kurdish Liberation Movement. Ihsan Bertal as being one of the cadres in the political spectrum of the Kurdistan Liberation Movement is evaluated as a martyr. We hereby declare Ihsan Bertal who had lost his life accidently, a martyr of democracy.

Because of this grave incident, we extend our condolences to his family and the Kurdish people and share their pain. We apologize to the Kurdish people and the family of Ihsan Bertal for this grave mistake which had happened totally as a result of a coincidence without any intent, purpose and plan.

HPG Headquarters Command

25 February 2011