(http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/121126-turgut-ozal-3a.photoblog600.jpg)Fatih Saribas / Reuters, fileTurkish President Turgut Ozal, seen here in January 1993, died of heart failure in 1993. Recent tests on his exhumed body revealed evidence of poisoning, a newspaper reported Monday.By ReutersISTANBUL -- An autopsy on the exhumed body late President Turgut Ozal, who led Turkey out of military rule in the 1980s, has revealed evidence of poisoning, a Turkish newspaper reported Monday.
There had long been rumors that Ozal, who died of heart failure in 1993 at the age of 65, was murdered by militants of the "deep state" -- a shadowy nationalist strain within the Turkish establishment of the day. He had angered some with his efforts to end the Kurdish conflict and survived an assassination bid in 1988.
His body, dug up last month on the orders of prosecutors investigating suspicions of foul play in his death, contained the banned insecticide DDT and the related compound DDE at ten times the normal level, Today's Zaman cited sources (http://www.todayszaman.com/news-299314-new-poisoning-evidence-spurs-call-for-expanded-probe-into-ozals-death.html) from the state Forensic Medicine Institute as saying.
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