Governor reviews extradition request

Celal Kildag

(CNS): The Cayman Islands governor has not yet certified a request by the Turkish government to extradite a German citizen who was arrested on an Interpol warrant in Cayman when he arrived here on a cruise ship last November. Celal Kildag (58) appeared in court Friday on the eve of the legal deadline for his possible extradition to Turkey in the face claims by the authorities there that he was involved in terrorist offences in the 1980’s.

Director of Public Prosecutions Cheryll Richards told the court that Turkey supplied the relevant extradition documents on Wednesday, 18 January, just three days before the 45 day deadline but that Governor Helen Kilpatrick was still reviewing the request. The case was therefore adjourned until Saturday, 21 January, the formal deadline for a decision to be made about whether or not the Cayman authorities will agree to the extradition.

Kildag, who has been in HMP Northward since his arrest in November, was bailed without objection from the crown to a hotel, as his wife and daughter have now arrived in Cayman. His passport was retained by the courts and a curfew between 10pm and 6am was imposed on him for Friday evening before he returns to court tomorrow to learn his fate. Since his arrest he has made it clear through his attorney Laurence Aiolfi, of Samson & McGrath, that he will fight the extradition if the governor certifies the Turkish request.

Kildag is an ethnic Kurd who left Turkey in the 1980’s and was granted political asylum in Germany, where he has lived ever since. The Turkish authorities claim that Kildag was involved in killings committed by a Kurdish separatist movement in the eastern part of Turkey in 1988. Kildag, however, has denied any involvement and has said that he left the country in the early 1980’s for Germany and has never been back to Turkey.

The Interpol warrant, which was issued in relation to Kildag by the Turkish authorities and triggered when he docked in Cayman on a cruise ship, was just over a year old. There has been no indication why the Turkish authorities raised the warrant more than thirty years after the alleged offences.

In recent months, concerns have been raised about the increasingly authoritarian nature of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey, where growing numbers of people are being imprisoned for what appears to be politically motivated reasons. One of the regime’s many targets are the ethnic Kurds and the various separatist political movements.

Although the United Kingdom has an extradition treaty with Turkey, which extends to Cayman, the authorities do not automatically extradite suspects without giving some consideration to the details of the case and the human rights implications. The authorities in Turkey are not required to send evidence of their accusations but it is understood that the authorities here have raised Kildag’s claims that he was not in Turkey at the time the alleged offences were carried out.