ANKARA - Turkish police have captured two fugitive Islamist extremists convicted in absentia for a 1993 arson attack that killed dozens of people at a gathering in eastern Turkey of liberal artists and intellectuals, officials said Monday.
Anti-terror police nabbed the two -- identified only by their initials -- in a raid on the building where they were hiding in the eastern province of Sivas, the local security department said in a statement carried by the Anatolia news agency.
One of the fugitives had been sentenced to life imprisonment and the other to seven-and-a-half years for their involvement in the July 2, 1993, arson attack against the Madimak hotel in Sivas city.
Thousands of conservative Muslims rioted that day, attacking the hotel housing a poetry festival organized by the Alevi community, followers of a liberal Turkish version of Islam long scorned by the Sunni majority.
Thirty-seven people, including prominent poets, critics and musicians, perished in the fire.
After a legal marathon that lasted more than seven years, 31 people were sentenced to death for their part in the attack.
The death penalty has since been abolished in Turkey and the sentences were commuted to life in prison.
The Sivas attack raised the alarm among the secularist establishment, which saw it as a warning sign of mounting Islamic activisim in Turkey, which has an overwhelmingly Muslim population.
03/07/2005 12:06 GMT