New samples taken from hotel wreckage where 35 Cypriots died

New samples were taken from the wreckage of the Isias hotel in the Turkish city of Adiyaman, where 35 Cypriots and 37 others were killed during last year’s earthquakes, as scientific investigations continue into the hotel’s collapse.

The taking of new samples was announced on Wednesday and was done by drilling through the remains of the hotel’s supporting columns with the aim of ascertaining whether the building had been constructed safely and according to the relevant laws.

The decision to take fresh samples had been taken at a previous hearing at Adiyaman’s third high criminal court in June, with the samples set to be sent to the Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey’s Aegean city of Izmir.

There, a panel of experts examined the wreckage in detail.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the Turkish Cypriot Famagusta municipality agreed to erect in the town a memorial to the 24 Cypriot children who died when the hotel collapsed, all of whom were from Famagusta and the surrounding villages.

The memorial will be located on the Sulu roundabout, next to which the Polat Pasha mosque is located.

The announcement was made following a meeting between Turkish Cypriot Famagusta mayor Suleyman Ulucay and some of the parents of the children who had died.

Ulucay said he hopes the monument will be completed by the end of next year, while Rusen Yucesoylu Karakaya, whose daughter Selin Karakaya was among those killed, said “the names and memories of our children will be remembered and kept alive throughout Cyprus.”

The trial of the 11 people who have been held responsible for the deaths of the 35 Cypriots and 37 others who were killed when the hotel collapsed is set to resume on October 22.

All 11 people currently stand accused of “causing death by conscious negligence” at Adiyaman’s third high criminal court, and, if found guilty, could face a maximum of 22 and a half years in prison each.

However, the families of those killed have demanded that the 11 be charged with intentionally killing all 72 victims. Most recently, hundreds of people marched across northern Nicosia in April to demand that the charges be upgraded, while a similar protest had been held in Famagusta in November.

Proceedings have thus far been slow, with a total of four university reports having been written into the hotel’s collapse.

The first two were written by Trabzon’s Karadeniz Technical University and the Istanbul Technical University, and outlined how sand and gravel from a local river had been used in the hotel’s construction, and how supporting columns had been cut at the hotel, among numerous other deficiencies.

The third, written by Ankara’s Gazi University, had generated controversy as it had been much less scathing than the other two, and had led to the release of two of the suspects who had initially been held in custody following the first phase of the trial in January.

Due to the controversy generated by the Gazi University report, the court had ordered that the Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir write a fourth report on the matter.

In May, the Adiyaman Provincial governor’s office had given permission for criminal investigations to be launched into the conduct of four retired former civil servants when the Isias hotel’s owners had filed applications for various construction and change of use permits over the years.

It had been found that permits had been given to the Isias hotel which did not comply with the relevant laws, and that information written on permits did not match the work which had been carried out at the hotel.