Leyla Söylemez


Leyla Şöylemez was an area manager of the PKK youth organisation. Her nome de guerre was Ronahî. In Turkey Leyla Şöylemez had an arrest warrant issued against her on charges of "membership of a terrorist organization".

Background

She fled to Germany in 1990s together with her family and lived in Halle, where she studied architecture. But she did not graduate, in order to become more involved in politics. She was assassinated in Paris on 9 January 2013, along with Sakine Cansız and Fidan Doğan. She was shot in the head with a silenced weapon at the Kurdish Information Centre in Paris. Within a week of the assassination Ömer Güney was detained by the French police. After questioning him they suspected him of being involved in the murder and put him in pretrial detention. By January 21 he was the main suspect as television closed circuit images showed he was at the premises the day of the murder. In December 2016,a month before the trial would have begun, Güney died from a tumor in a hospital in Paris.