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AMSTERDAM — Dutch
prosecutors have accused a Kurdish separatist group,
PKK, of using extortion and threats to raise money
for its activities.
Three police were arrested in The Hague, Rotterdam
and in Germany this week as part of an investigation
into the PKK's fundraising activities, it was
reported on Thursday.
Last November, Dutch police arrested 29 people
during a raid on what they said was a PKK training
camp in Liempde in the south of the Netherlands.
Two weeks earlier, police arrested three people at
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, at least one of whom
is alleged to have undergone training at the camp.
But the Dutch investigation into the PKK had been
launched long before the arrests were made, a
spokesperson for the prosecutor's office said.
Numbering 25 million people, the Kurds are the
largest ethnic group in the world without a country
of their own.
They say their unofficial national-state encompasses
parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. While Kurds
enjoy significant power in northern Iraq, none of
the four countries acknowledge greater Kurdistan as
an antonymous region or state.
The Marxist-Leninist Kurdish Worker's Party, or PKK,
launched an insurgency against Turkey in 1984 in a
bid to create a Kurdish homeland. Up to 60,000
people — Kurds and Turks — died before the PKK
called a ceasefire in 1999.
In that year, Turkish agents captured PKK founder
Abdullah Ocalan in Kenya.
The PKK, which is generally regarded to be a
terrorist organisation, changed its name in the last
few years and is now known as the People's Congress
of Kurdistan (Kongra-Gel). Generally though, the
movement is still described as the PKK.
The national prosecutor's office in the Netherlands
issued a statement on Thursday announcing the arrest
of the three suspects.
It said that various police investigations had
revealed suspected drug dealers had been forced —
sometimes with violence — to contribute to the PKK's
funds.
The Dutch national detectives unit has also taken a
statement from a businessman who claims he was
threatened with violence if he did not give the PKK
money. The organised crime division of the public
prosecutor's office believe other business people
have been targeted in a similar way.
[Copyright Expatica News and Novum Nieuws 2005]
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