Images from security cameras that have come to light showing the manager of the hotel where 78 people died – 36 of them were children – fleeing a few minutes after the fire broke out without alerting anyone, have further sparked public outrage and anger among survivors and relatives of the victims, as the trial continues against those responsible, for whom the prosecution is seeking sentences totalling almost 2,000 years in prison.
In the footage, as reported by news agencies, hotel manager Emir Aras, his wife Elif Aras and their children are seen leaving the room in which they were staying at the Grand Kartal Hotel, located in a famous ski resort in Turkey’s Bolu province; the date of the footage shows them leaving the room at 3:34 a.m. on 21 January, some 18 minutes after investigators have established that the fire started, which eventually consumed the hotel, killing 78 people and injuring 133 others.
The video shows Emir Aras first running down the corridor to check what is happening, only to return a few moments later; his wife Elif Aras, who is also the daughter of the owner of the hotel (Halit Ergül), is also seen coming out of another room in a panic. Finally she and her husband leave the hotel together with their children without alerting anyone else in the other rooms (the hotel was practically full when the tragedy occurred) and the recording ends with smoke from the fire filling the corridor.
32 charged with negligence and manslaughter
Both Emir Aras and his wife Elif Aras (who as the owner’s daughter was also a member of the board of directors of the company that owns the hotel) are remanded in custody pending the conclusion of the trial, which continued yesterday for its eighth day. The indictment prepared by the Bolu Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office as part of the investigation into the horrific hotel fire calls for prison sentences totalling 1,998 years.
The defendants include the owners of the hotel, the company’s board members and managers Halit Ergül, Emine Murtezaoğlu Ergül, Ceyda Hacıbekiroğlu, Elif Aras, Emir Aras, Zeki Yılmaz, Ahmet Demir, Kadir Özdemir, Cemal Özer and Mehmet Salun; also as defendants are the Bolu deputy mayor Sedat Gülener, acting fire chief Kenan Coşkun and firefighter İrfan Acar. They are all charged with “manslaughter with possible intent” and “injury with possible intent”.
Due to the enormous expectation aroused by the trial, a big gymnasium of the Social Sciences High School of Bolu had to be transformed into a courtroom with a capacity of 700 people. One of the questions that has sparked the most indignation during the trial is precisely why the hotel staff and management failed to alert the guests when the fire broke out, which could have saved many lives.
The hotel manager, Emir Aras, had said in previous statements that he had “knocked on doors and shouted” to warn guests, something that the recording shows to be untrue, and which adds to the serious safety deficiencies in the building identified during the investigation, and overlooked by the local authorities.
“Don’t warn anyone, we’ll handle it“
The explanation as to why the guests were not warned was allegedly given by some witnesses; during the trial one of the witnesses, Tuni Urhan, a hotel worker in charge of the minibars in the rooms, claimed to have heard how another hotel manager, Zeki Yılmaz, told the staff after the fire broke out “Don’t warn anyone, we will handle (the fire) ourselves“.
Gülşen Boncuk, a woman who lost her 41-year-old daughter, husband and two grandchildren in the terrible hotel fire in Bolu, tearfully addressed the defendants during the trial, saying: “Look me in the eyes. I want to look into the eyes of those who caused this. My daughter, my son-in-law and my two grandchildren are dead. Look me in the eyes. You let them burn while you saved yourselves. I don’t want you to die; I want you to die every day, suffering and saying ‘We are the murderers of 78 people’. We won’t be able to see our children anymore. You have taken away our reason for living’.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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