GÜLEÇ JUDGMENT OF 27 JULY 1998 31 Secondly, his son had not been demonstrating but had been killed while he was returning from school by shots fired from one of the armoured vehicles used by the gendarmes. The Government’s allegations, to the effect that Ahmet had been a member of the PKK and had knowingly participated in events orchestrated by terrorists belonging to that illegal organisation, were not backed up by any evidence. Numerous witnesses had testified that the crowd had been composed of men, women and children and that only the security forces had opened fire. Consequently, the Turkish State bore full responsibility for his son’s death. (b) The Government 67. The Government maintained that the demonstration of 4 March 1991 had quickly lapsed into insurrection and vandalism, owing to the presence of masked PKK terrorists who had fired at random, using women and children as a human shield. The demonstrators had been ordered to stop by means of a loudspeaker announcement, but at the instigation of these terrorists they had not done so. When some people realised that they were not attending a funeral (see paragraph 17 above) but rather taking part in a mass assault on public buildings and the security forces, they had tried to leave the demonstration, but had been prevented from doing so by the terrorists. The report on the incidents, the report on the official investigation and the discontinuation order made by the Administrative Council on 18 October 1991 all showed that it had been a violent demonstration, and that shots had been fired at the security forces. The applicant’s son and another person had been killed, fifteen other civilians and twenty-four members of the security forces had been wounded; many non-military buildings, both private and public, had been damaged. The autopsy carried out on the deceased confirmed that, as the bullet that caused death had followed a horizontal trajectory, it had come from a levelled weapon and had ricocheted off a solid surface – such as a wall. A number of spent Kalashnikov cartridges found at the incident scene proved that the applicant’s son had been killed by a shot fired from a Kalashnikov rifle (a weapon used exclusively by the terrorists). If the bullet had been fired by the Condor armoured vehicle, as the applicant alleged, it would have to have followed a downward trajectory, since the gun carried by the Condor was mounted on its turret, at least 220 cm above the ground. Moreover, if such a weapon had been used against the crowd, it would certainly have claimed many more victims. The witness statements heard by the Commission’s delegation simply indicated that the armoured vehicle had fired in the air to disperse the demonstrators, not to return fire from the terrorists hiding among them.