ISTANBUL – Five years after the death of prominent Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci, court proceedings began Oct. 21 in which three police officers and one Kurdish militant are charged with killing the former chair of the Diyarbakir Bar Association.

Attorneys for Elci’s family claimed the trial was marked by abnormalities, requesting the judge panel recuse itself for not exhibiting “impartiality” after it rejected all their requests. The judges ruled to send the recusal request to an upper court for examination, postponing the trial until March 3, 2021.

Elci was shot and killed on Nov. 28, 2015, during a press conference in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, where he was protesting the rise of armed clashes between Turkish security forces and militants with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) at the time.

Shortly after Elci began speaking, two PKK militants shot two police officers on an adjacent street and escaped toward the press conference. As the assailants ran by Elci, police officers at the scene fired a volley of bullets, one of which may have hit Elci in the head, causing his death.