KURT JUDGMENT OF 25 MAY 1998 11 41. By letter dated 4 December 1993 Captain Cural, district gendarmerie commander, under heading of the district gendarmerie command at Bismil, informed the Bismil Principal Public Prosecutor’s office that Üzeyir Kurt had not been taken into custody and it was thought that he had probably been kidnapped by terrorists (identical terms to the letter of 30 November in the preceding paragraph). 42. On 14 December 1993 the applicant submitted a fingerprinted petition to the Principal Public Prosecutor at the National Security Court at Diyarbakır. She stated that her son Üzeyir had been taken into custody twenty days previously by gendarmes and since they had had no news, they were concerned for his life. She requested that information be given to her concerning his whereabouts. On the bottom of the petition, the Principal Public Prosecutor noted in handwriting the same day that the name Üzeyir Kurt was not in their custody records. 43. On 15 December 1993 the applicant submitted a second written petition to the Bismil public prosecutor which repeated the terms of her petition of 14 December. The public prosecutor wrote on the petition an instruction to the gendarmerie regional command to provide her with the information requested. 44. On 21 March 1994 the Bismil public prosecutor, Ridvan Yıldırım, issued a decision of dismissal. The document identifies the complainant as the applicant and the victim as Üzeyir Kurt. The crime was identified as membership of an outlawed organisation and kidnapping and the suspects as members of the PKK. The text of the decision stated that following a clash between the PKK and the security forces, PKK members escaped from the village, kidnapping the said victim. Since this crime fell within the jurisdiction of the National Security Courts, the case was dismissed and referred, with the file, to the Diyarbakır National Security Court. E. The Commission’s evaluation of the evidence and its findings of fact 1. The written and oral evidence 45. The Commission had regard to the documentary evidence submitted by the applicant and the Government in support of their respective assertions (see paragraphs 37 and 38 above). Furthermore, at a hearing held in Ankara from 8 to 9 February 1996 the Commission’s delegates heard the oral testimony of the following witnesses: the applicant; Arap Kurt, the muhtar of Ağıllı village and brother-in-law of the applicant; Ridvan Yıldırım, the public prosecutor in Bismil who had been first approached by the applicant about her son’s disappearance (see paragraph 16 above); Izzet Cural, commander of Bismil district gendarmerie, who had proposed the plan for the military operation in Ağıllı village (see paragraph 31 above); Muharram Küpeli, a commander of a commando unit which was deployed during the military operation in the