Alleged killer of Russian jet pilot attends funeral in Istanbul
When Turkey downed a Russian jet near the Turkish-Syrian border in 2015 one of the pilots who jumped with parachute was killed by jihadists supposed to be fighting against the Syrian regime forces and/or ISIS. This act of killing the jumping Russian soldier was much cursed by many in the world.
Alpaslan Çelik the jihadist who is alleged to have done it attends a funeral in Istanbul on 27th January 2015.
Alparslan Çelik who is the son of a former district mayor elected from Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), spoke to reporters during the funeral ceremony of İbrahim Küçük, the head of the MHP bureau in Istanbul’s Fatih district who was killed by aerial bombardment in a Turkmen village in Syria.
He said; “I am here and there. I am going and returning. And now, I came for the funeral ceremony and I will go again”. He also implied he would return to Syrian and fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants. Media reports in 2014 said Çelik had been traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Turkmens who had been subjected to attacks by ISIL.
Russian media had reported that soldiers were searching for Çelik and looking to “take revenge” for Peshkov after Syrian pro-government forces recaptured the rebel-held town of Rabia backed by Russian airstrikes on Jan. 24. After the downing of the jet, Çelik defended the killing of Peshkov in a video, saying the pilot had dropped bombs on Turkmens. “That pilot bombed us five minutes before Turkey downed the Russian jet and our brothers were killed or wounded by these bombs. There is no place for a person who has bombed civilian Turkmens every day in my conscious,” Çelik had said.
Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov had claimed the person who shot Peshkov was Çelik, a Turkish citizen, and Moscow demanded Ankara arrest Çelik on Dec. 30, 2015.
Both pilots aboard the Russian Su-24 jet downed by Turkey on Nov. 24, 2015, ejected and parachuted to the ground on the Syrian side of the border. However, Peshkov was killed by gunfire from the ground after ejecting from the plane.
SOURCE: MEDIA
