German judicial authorities announced Monday that they had opened an investigation into the assassination attempt on a pro-Kurdish s...
German judicial authorities announced Monday that they had opened an investigation into the assassination attempt on a pro-Kurdish soccer player who had been shot at night.
Deniz Nucky, an attacker of the Turkish-led "Amidspor" club, was driving his car on Sunday night on a highway near his hometown of Delorn, in western Germany, when several shots were fired at his direction from inside a black car, without being injured.
"I could have died, did not pass (shots) away," the lad told the daily "de Welt" newspaper. "A bullet hit a window and passed another near a tyre," said Nucky, adding that he had lived "the greatest horror of his life."
"I think it's a political issue, I'm permanently targeted in Turkey because my positions are pro-Kurdish," the player told the weekly Der Spiegel website.
In April 2017, a Turkish court sentenced Nucky, a Kurdish soccer player born in Germany, to one and a half years ' imprisonment with a suspended sentence for "terrorist propaganda."
The player was prosecuted for calling on social media to put an end to the bloody battles in southeastern Turkey between the security forces and the Kurdistan Workers ' Party (PKK), which Turkey and its Western allies classify as a "terrorist organization."
The government in Turkey, which has vowed to wipe out the Kurdistan Workers ' Party (PKK), is pursuing critics of its policy and supporters of the Kurdish cause from journalists, opponents and ordinary citizens.
