ISTANBUL, Feb 4 (AFP) - A notorious Turkish right-wing militant was extradited from Ukraine on Friday more than three months after he was arrested there on an international arrest warrant, the Anatolia news agency reported Friday.
Haluk Kirci, 46, was brought to Istanbul on a scheduled Turkish Airlines flight from Kiev to Istanbul, the agency said without any details.
Kirci 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 far-right political groups, organized crime and the 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.
He was arrested in the southern Ukrainian city of Nikolayev in October and Turkey immediately asked Ukraine to hand him over.
02/04/2005 19:04 GMT - AFP