ANKARA, Oct 27 (AFP) - Turkey has launched procedures for the extradition of a notorious far-right militant who was arrested in Ukraine last week after having fled the country, Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said here Wednesday.
"The process has started. We will send his file (to Ukraine) on Monday," Anatolia news agency quoted Cicek as saying. "We would like to have him extradited immediately."
Kirci, 46, was detained last week in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolayev on an international arrest warrant, Turkish media reports said.
He is believed to have been a hitman for a group of former members of the violent ultra-rightist Grey Wolves organization who were allegedly used in undercover missions by Turkey's intelligence services in the 1980s before turning to organized crime under the protection of high-level officials.
Kirci was first sentenced to death for the 1978 killing of seven left-wing students in Ankara; the penalty was commuted to 30 years and he was released by mistake in 1991.
Rearrested in 1996, he managed to escape soon afterwards while in police custody in Istanbul, in circumstances that remain unexplained.
Police caught up with him again in 1999, in Istanbul, where he was tried in a high-profile case that shed light on links between the political far-right, organized crime and security forces in Turkey.
He was given a four-year term on top of his original sentence and was freed in March.
An appeals court decided that he had been released too early and should go back behind bars, but by then he had disappeared.
10/27/2004 13:28 GMT - AFP