Turkish police investigating the murder of Sarai Sierra have honed in on five people after collecting 51 DNA samples, it was revealed today.
Though authorities will not have results for two weeks, they have managed to narrow it down to a small group of Sarai Sierra’s internet contacts as well as the homeless people who were at the scene when her body was found.
One person who is believed to be talking to investigators is Ammer Reduron, who Sarai Sierra connected with on Instagram in the months before her trip and stayed with while she was in Amsterdam.
Little is known about the 31-year-old Dutch national, but last year he posted on a site similar to Craigslist that he lives in an immigrant ghetto in Amsterdam called Zuidoost.
Last week, Ammer Reduron claimed he was not a suspect and admitted Sarai Sierra stayed with him when she went to Amsterdam on a side trip – also saying her husband Steven knew this and was OK with it as the two were friends.
“Taking care of her,” he said last week.
“Meaning showing my city and being a good friend to her. She had a wonderful time here.”
Turkish police investigating the murder of Sarai Sierra have honed in on five people after collecting 51 DNA samples
On his Facebook, Ammer Reduron “checks in” at Amsterdam airport on January 15, which is purportedly when he went to pick up Sarai Sierra.
On January 23 – ten days before her body was found in Istanbul, Sarai Sierra’s sister Christina Jiminez become Facebook friends with him.
Aware that he is under the intense scrutiny of both the FBI and the media, he denounced them both on his Instagram site, alongside a picture of two toy pigs placed in an assimilated sex position.
“Media writes, goes home, gets paid, pay bills and don’t give a sh*t only about some juicy stories with no real or fact checked stories. Police should do their work. If you fart on the planet the FBI is on yo [sic] ass with some satellite sh*t.”
Police however, are giving little away as to what they have uncovered in the investigation.
Mystery has surrounded the death of 33-year-old Sarai Sierra since her body was found at a run-down area of Istanbul on February 2. She failed to make the flight back to New York on January 22.
Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the US to locate Osama Bin Laden, has said he was unaware he was involved with the 2011 killing of the al-Qaeda chief.
Speaking for the first time since his arrest, Shakil Afridi told Fox News he did not think he needed to escape after the killing but was then kidnapped by Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency.
He said the ISI, who he says tortured him, regards the US as its worst enemy.
Dr. Shakil Afridi is understood to have been contacted by phone in jail in Peshawar.
Prison officials were taken by surprise by reports of the interview, but did not rule out that a phone could have been smuggled into his cell.
The doctor is alleged to have used a fake hepatitis B vaccination campaign to obtain DNA samples of Osama Bin Laden’s family.
He was sentenced to 33 years in jail in May for funding and supporting a militant group, but correspondents say it is generally acknowledged he is being punished for helping the CIA.
Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the US to locate Osama Bin Laden, has said he was unaware he was involved with the 2011 killing of the al-Qaeda chief
The interview was published on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US, and came as current al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri confirmed the death of another senior figure in the network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother Mohamed told CNN that he was prepared to negotiate peace between the West and Islamists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, who spent 14 years in jail in Egypt, is said to have the respect of the new Egyptian government but claims to be ideologically close to his brother.
Speaking from Peshawar Central Jail, Dr. Shakil Afridi said he had not realized that the CIA was targeting Osama Bin Laden.
“I didn’t know about a specific target apart from the work I was given to do,” he told Fox News.
“I was aware that some terrorists were residing in that compound, but I didn’t know whom. I was shocked. I didn’t believe I was associated with his killing.”
He said that the CIA advised him to flee to Afghanistan.
However, he was scared to cross the volatile border region and did not think it was necessary for him to escape because he did not consider himself to be involved in Osama Bin Laden’s death, he said.
Dr. Shakil Afridi was arrested at a checkpoint at Hayatabad on 22 May last year, 20 days after Osama Bin Laden’s death.
After this he says he was blindfolded for eight months and handcuffed for a year in a prison beneath the ISI headquarters in Islamabad.
“I had to bend down on my knees to eat with only my mouth, like a dog,” he said.
During interrogations he was tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks, he said, as the ISI rebuked him for helping the US find Bin Laden.
“They said: <<The Americans are our worst enemies, worse than the Indians>>,” he added.
Dr. Shakil Afridi also said fellow inmates had told him that they had been advised to make things up to prevent interrogation by visiting CIA officers.
He said that he himself was “proud” to work with the CIA and would help the US again despite the torture and psychological abuse he said he had suffered.
“I have a lot of respect and love for your people,” he said.
There has been no official response to Shakil Afridi’s allegations, but the Pakistani authorities have always insisted that they treated him the way any country would someone found working for a foreign spy agency.
Osama Bin Laden’s killing created a crisis in relations between the US and Pakistan, whose government was seriously embarrassed as it emerged Bin Laden had been living in Pakistan.
Islamabad felt the covert US operation was a violation of its sovereignty.
Both US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said Dr. Shakil Afridi’s arrest was a mistake and called for his release.
