Court orders new report into deaths of 35 Cypriots

The third high criminal court in the Turkish city of Adiyaman on Friday evening ordered that a new report be written regarding the deaths of 35 Cypriots last year.

A total of 24 Cypriot children and 11 Cypriot adults, as well as 47 others, were killed when the Isias hotel in Adiyaman collapsed during the earthquakes which hit the region on February 6 last year.

The Cypriots made up the Famagusta Turk Maarif Koleji (TMK) school volleyball team and were in Adiyaman for a tournament. Following their deaths, the team received the nickname “champion angels”.

A total of 11 people stand accused of “causing death by conscious negligence”, and, if found guilty, could face a maximum of 22 and a half years in prison each.

The latest hearing in their trial took place on Friday, with three reports into the hotel’s collapse already having been written by Trabzon’s Karadeniz Technical University, the Istanbul Technical University, and Ankara’s Gazi University.

The Gazi University report had generated controversy as it had been much less scathing than the other two, and had led to the release of two of the suspects who had initially been held in custody following the first phase of the trial in January.

In court on Friday, the prosecution had requested that the two be re-detained, but the court ruled against the request.

The next hearing will take place on June 12.

Speaking after the conclusion of proceedings, Rusen Yucesoylu Karakaya, whose daughter Selin was among those killed, said the families of those killed are “aware that the process will be long”.

“We, the families, will continue our fight. The defendants’ lawyers have nothing. The facts are clear. The facts are already in clear view with the reports we have received,” she said.

She added, “they killed our children and our loved ones, they will be punished for it”, and went on to describe the Isias hotel’s collapse as a “murder”.

In court on Friday, hotel owner Ahmet Bozkurt had denied all wrongdoing, while its architect Erdem Yildiz said documents had been forged and his signature had appeared in places he had not signed.

Yonca Hurol, an architecture professor at Famagusta’s Eastern Mediterranean University, told the court about how previous reports had found that that sand and gravel from a local river had been used in the building’s construction, and that various other corners had been cut regarding the building’s safety during construction.

She pointed out that a 2.5 metre hole had been drilled through the centre of the building, and that seven holes which had been drilled allowed water to seep into the supporting beams.

She said a total of 98 building regulations had not been followed and that the building “would have either had to have been demolished or seriously reinforced” to become compliant.

Another expert, Serhan Sensoz, was then called upon to speak, and explained that in the initial EMU study, it was found that a total of 59 columns in the building gave way within 20 seconds of the earthquake beginning.

He added that the building had collapsed within 16 seconds.