PKK frees kidnapped businessman in southeastern Turkey

The outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) released early Wednesday a prominent businessman who was kidnapped over the weekend in southeastern Turkey, local Today's Zaman reported.

Businessman Abdullah Tuz was reportedly abducted after Tarawih, an extra night prayer specific for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in the Ferez village of Adakli district in the predominantly Kurdish province of Bingol, said the report, adding that his family informed the gendarmerie after they failed to hear from Tuz, Xinhua reported.

Turkish gendarmerie teams launched an operation to find the businessman, said the report.

Tuz was reportedly released from the Karacehennem forest near the village and he testified to gendarmes as to why the PKK kidnapped him and what he did for the three days.

Tuz's abduction followed another kidnapping incident in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir last month. On July 9, the PKK kidnapped two soldiers and a health official after stopping a military vehicle on the Diyarbakir-Lice highway.

Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the banned PKK took up arms in 1984 to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. Some 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the PKK in the past over two decades.


/Trend/