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Jacky Sutton’s family and IWPR: “She acted alone”

There is a new turning point in Jacky Sutton’s  death. According to a press release the woman acted alone, there was no sign of struggle and she had both cash and credit cards in her wallet.

“Based on an extensive review of the information provided by Turkish authorities, the family of Jacky Sutton and IWPR have reached the preliminary conclusion that no other parties were involved in her death.”

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Though Sutton’s family and IWPR hired a private investigator.

“IWPR and the family will be seeking a further assessment from an independent investigative expert in order to confirm the findings once the Turkish investigation is complete.”

This is the statement.

 

Jacky Sutton, the story of a cover up that might end badly

Jacqueline Sutton Linkedin profile https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jacky-sutton-llm/10/339/980

The journalism and humanitarian world is weeping for the sudden death of Jacky Sutton, 50 year-old. She was a well respected researcher and journalist. She travelled throughout the world, looking for the truth and trying to help people in need. Nobody who knew her believe she committed suicide and everybody is asking for an international investigation. I wrote about it in the paper edition of Corriere della Sera.

Let’s start with what we really know: Jacky Sutton died at Ataturk airport, in Istanbul, Turkey, on Sunday early morning. She was found with shoe laces around her neck by three Russian tourists in a bathroom. She was passing by the Turkish hub, on her way to Erbil, Iraq, from London. Her plane landed at 10 pm and her connecting flight was at 12 am. For some unclear reasons she lost it.

Conveniently enough the CCTV were not working in the area where she was waiting and around the bathroom where she died. But others filmed her while passing security and with a black bag while walking around the airport. From the footage I have seen, it’s impossible to determine anything about her shoes. Although the footage can say very little, at first she doesn’t seem in distress.

 

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Is the US changing policy towards Rojava and the Kurds?

Dyarbakir

 

It has been a busy weekend – to say the least- in the Middle East.

On Saturday morning, two suicide bombers targeted a Kurdish peace march in Ankara, Turkey. The blasts killed over 100 people and injured 400. So far nobody claimed the attack, though the PM Ahmet Davutoglu claimed it could have been carried out by ISIS.   Accounts on the ground talked about riot police assaulting the crowd straight after the explosions, preventing ambulance to get to the site and helping people. Social media and the internet got shut down hours after the blasts. Curfews got in place in several cities. There has been a significant rise in social tension that reminds me of what happened in Italy during the 70’s and early  80’s, the strategy of tension a sort of counter-insurgency tactics in which the society is destabilized through violence.

A man crying on the bombing site in Ankara

In the meantime, during the weekend violence broke out again in Jerusalem and Gaza. Many fears for a Third Intifada and with the world concentrating mainly on Syria that could be a quite dangerous scenario.

This morning I woke up with another news that should not have surprised me, but somehow it did. The US has dropped about 110 pallets of ammunition and weapons to the YPG – The People Protection Unit -. We talked about them several times in this blog, as the only effective force on the ground stopping ISIS. They are also fighting for Kurdish rights, women equality and ecology.

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Journey to Qandil mountains, the PKK main base in Iraq

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Since I started reporting from Iraq and Syria, I always wanted to go to Qandil. Many Kurdish fighters told me about this 28 miles long valley which has become the PKK main headquarter in Northern Iraq. Their stories involved tunnels digged deep into the ground, camouflage training camps, a lot of politics. All of them were sure Qandil is impossible to penetrate. All tales involved a kind of a magical element.

The PKK has been labelled a terrorist organization by the Turkish government and many Western countries, including the US. The PKK picked up an armed struggle in 1984 and started a civil war against Ankara claiming for an autonomous State in which the Kurds will be free. At least 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, died during the conflict.

A lot of things has changed since, starting from the geo-political scenario and alliances on the ground.  The global changes imposed a renovation even within the organization which through the past 40 years changed mentality and somehow beliefs. The first main adjustment arrived when the PKK leader and co-founder Abdullah Ocalan, was arrested in Nairobi in 1999. I wrote about it in an article for War Is Boring.

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Benedetta Argentieri

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