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Russia honors slain envoy as Turkey points to coup link
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RUSSIA yesterday laid to rest envoy Andrei Karlov after a packed memorial ceremony in Moscow for the diplomat who was assassinated by an off-duty policeman in Ankara this week.
Dozens of colleagues and relatives attended the ceremony for Karlov, the ambassador to Turkey whose death Moscow labelled an act of terror.
President Vladimir Putin laid red roses at the foot of Karlov’s coffin and spoke with his relatives but left the ceremony without making a statement.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised the deceased envoy, who was 62, and paid his respects to his mother Maria, widow Marina and son Gennady, also a diplomat, as the ambassador’s body lay in state in a flower-decked coffin.
“We are saying goodbye to our friend Andrei Karlov who became a victim of a malicious, vile terrorist attack while in the line of duty,” Lavrov said at the ceremony held in the foreign ministry headquarters.
“We will never forget Andrei.”
A religious service was then held at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Churchm Patriarch Kirill, before the ambassador was laid to rest at cemetery north of the city with full military honours.
In terrifying scenes captured on photo and video, 22-year-old policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas shot the ambassador nine times in the back on Monday while he was delivering a speech at an exhibition of photographs of Russia in Ankara.
The envoy died in hospital.
The assailant, who was off-duty and managed to circumvent the metal detectors by flashing his police credentials, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and “Don’t forget Aleppo” after targeting Karlov and was himself killed in a shootout with Turkish guards.
Altintas had no criminal record but authorities have moved to link the murder with Fethullah Gulen, a preacher living in self-imposed exile in the US whom Ankara previously blamed for orchestrating the attempted coup in July.
Pro-government press had reported that police discovered pro-Gulen literature belonging to Altintas. Erdogan went as far as to say that the killer “was a member of the FETO (Fethullah Terror Organization).”
Gulen has denied involvement in both the coup or the assassination, and Moscow has also refrained from assigning blame, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warning against “rushing to conclusions” before the investigation is complete.
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