The Chief Public Prosecutors Office in Turkey’s western Izmir province has reopened the investigation into Alpharslan Celik, the suspected killer of a Russian bomber pilot in Syria last November, after new evidence has come to light which they want to investigate. In a statement the prosecutor’s office explained that it has grounds to re-investigate the case. “It was found out that there was another [Russian] pilot that lost his life and that fire was opened on a Russian rescue helicopter which arrived to rescue the pilots and the helicopter crashed as a result. Even though the suspect Alparlan Celik stated that he tried to calm the situation but the people around him didn’t follow his orders, the fact that fire was opened on the rescue helicopter steadily opens up the defense to be re-investigated,” the statement read. “The insistence on firing on the rescue helicopter after the two pilots reached the ground made it necessary for the reevaluation of the suspect Alparslan Celik’s defense,” the statement added. Last November 24th Celik was an armed Turkmen fighting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in northwestern Syria. He later sought to justify Turkey’s controversial shoot-down of a Russian Su-24 warplane over the Syrian-Turkish frontier as well as the murder of Oleg Peshkov – the surviving pilot who managed to eject and was shot dead while parachuting to the ground. Last May the same Izmir prosecutors’ office dropped the case against Celik, who claimed he told his men not to shoot at Peshkov. Celik even suggested that Peshkov could have actually been killed by another group fighting in that area, claiming he “definitely” did not shoot him. Russia denies supplying the Turks with new evidence about the incident but nevertheless said it is watching the case closely. “We are expecting the investigation to be carried out seriously. We didn’t contribute to the recent developments. We didn’t request something,” a Russian diplomatic source told Hurriyet news. The shoot-down of the Russian warplane last November and the ensuing murder of Peshkov severely strained Russian-Turkish relations and saw Moscow impose economic sanctions on Ankara.
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