A British tourist who was kidnapped and then released by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was discovered to have visited a camp of the terrorist organization in Iran before the incident happened, Today's Zaman reported.
Massami Miyazaki-Ross, a British citizen of Japanese descent, made a statement to Turkish police on Monday after he was released in the Genc district of the southeastern province of Bingol late on Sunday night.
On Saturday, terrorists seized mobile phones and other belongings of passengers in the bus that was traveling near Diyarbakır's Lice district. Ross, who was in the bus, was kidnapped by the terrorists and released on Sunday. When police asked him what he was doing in the terrorists' hub, Ross said he was heading from Iran to Georgia. The police doubted about the truth of his story since there was no stamp in his passport to indicate that he had stopped in Iran. As the interrogation continued, the police learned that Ross had visited a camp of the PKK called Anbat, located near the border of Turkey and Iran, and spent a couple of days there. The British tourist walked for 22 hours from the camp in Iran to Bingol and then to Diyarbakır. After spending a couple of hours in Diyarbakır, Ross took the bus to head the Black Sea province of Trabzon, from where he intended to go to Georgia. The Briton said he was also taken to a cave near Lice, where the terrorists had called their chief "doctor." Ross said he hid the fact that he was a British citizen but told people he met in Iran that he was Japanese.
While Ross was missing, a special sergeant and a major were killed when they stepped on an improvised explosive device laid by PKK militants in the Lice district of Diyarbakır on Monday. The Diyarbakır Governor's Office said the two men were part of an anti-PKK operation to rescue the Briton.