First Ergenekon Case Combined With Council Of State Attack

ISTANBUL - The first Ergenekon case was combined with the Council of State attack on Monday.
The first case filed after the "Ergenekon" investigation tries 86 suspects, including retired general Veli Kucuk and Labor Party (IP) chairman Dogu Perincek.
The trial began after 52-days of break.
In Monday's hearing, the first Ergenekon case was combined with the attack against the Council of State and the Cumhuriyet daily newspaper.
The Council of State and Cumhuriyet daily newspaper case was trying eight suspects.
In the 2,455-page indictment, prosecutors Zekeriya Oz, Mehmet Ali Pekguzel and Nihat Taskin demanded aggravated life-imprisonment for ret. Gen. Kucuk, Perincek, journalist Ilhan Selcuk, ret. Colonel Fikri Karadag and Alemdaroglu. Prosecutors demanded imprisonment terms ranging from 1 year to 74 years for the other suspects.
The alleged criminal network that came to be known as "Ergenekon" was revealed after police seized 27 grenades, TNT explosives and fuses in a shanty house in Istanbul on June 12, 2007 and Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into weapons. Police waged operations in several provinces and detained a number of people, including retired senior army officers, journalists and businessmen, for their alleged involvement in the network.
In the case of the attack against members of the Council of State, the High Criminal Court in Ankara sentenced Alparslan Arslan to aggravated life imprisonment twice in February 2008 for attempting to destroy the constitutional order in Turkey and killing judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin in an armed attack on May 17, 2006. Three other suspects were also sentenced to life imprisonment for attempting to destroy the constitutional order in Turkey. But the Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that the case should be combined with the file of the ongoing Ergenekon case and abolished the verdict of the court.