Turkish court rules to keep 69 policemen, who exposed Erdoğan’s grafts, in jail

An İstanbul court ruled on Friday for the continuation of imprisonment of 69 police chiefs and police officers who played role in an operation on December 25, 2013 which exposed the corruption and bribery scandal related to then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his family members and his cabinet’s ministers.

The trial at the İstanbul 13th High Criminal Court was participated in jailed police chiefs Mehmet Habip Kunt, Hüseyin Tokgöz and Fatih Aydın and Mehmet Akif Üner. Othe jailed police officers Ercan Taş, Hayrettin Can and Raif Bektaş participated in the hearing through SEGBİS.

During the hearing Mehmet Akif Üner made his defence before the court and requested his acquittal. However, the court has announce its interim decision for the continuation of the imprisonment of all police chiefs and police officers including Yakub Saygılı, Kazım Aksoy, İbrahim Şener, Arif İbiş, Mustafa Demirhan, Mehmet Habip Kunt, Mehmet Fatih Yiğit, Hüseyin Tokgöz, Ercan Taş, Hayrettin Can, Fatih Aydın and Raif Bektaş.

The court also issued arrest warrants for police chiefs Engin Filiz, Hamza Tosun and Sinan Sağyalavaç and decided to arrest in absence for US-based Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, fugitive police officers Hüseyin Korkmaz and Sinan Dursun. The court has also decided for the continuation of these three people to be searched through an Interpol red notice.

The trial was postponed to June 19-20-21 which will be started with the continuation of the defence by Mehmet Akif Üner.

The Dec. 17/25, 2013 corruption investigation had incriminated the cabinet ministers and Turkey’s autocratic President Erdoğan’s family members. Turkish prosecutors accused Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and high-ranking Turkish officials of involvement in facilitating Iranian money transfers via gold smuggling.

After Erdoğan cast the case as a coup attempt to overthrow the government orchestrated by his political enemies, several prosecutors were removed from the case, police were reassigned and the investigation in Turkey against Zarrab was dropped. The all related police chiefs and officers were jailed in 2014. Last year wives of most of these police officers were also jailed over their alleged links to the Gülen movement.

Zarrab testified in New York federal court in early December that he had bribed Turkey’s former economy minister, Mehmet Zafer Çağlayan, in a billion-dollar scheme to smuggle gold for oil in violation of US sanctions on Iran. Zarrab also said that Turkey’s then-Prime Minister Erdoğan personally authorized the involvement of Turkish banks in the scheme.

Zarrab also said he made payments to secure his release in February 2014 and that those payments were partly bribes. The Turkish government seized the assets of Zarrab and his relatives following his testimony in the US court.

Hüseyin Korkmaz in the New York trial of Atilla called Erdoğan the “No. 1” target in a group that also included Çağlayan, and Süleyman Aslan, a former chief executive at Halkbank, a large Turkish state-owned bank that was central to the sanction-busting scheme.

Police notes of the Dec. 17 operations show that Zarrab personally talked with Erdoğan on April 13, 2013 and asked for an official police guard. Erdoğan and his Cabinet approved it immediately.

A phone call and a video in the Dec. 17 file show that Zarrab in July 2013 sent an unspecified amount of money to the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey (TÜRGEV), run by Bilal Erdoğan, Erdoğan’s son.

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from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-court-rules-to-keep-69-policemen-who-exposed-erdogans-grafts-in-jail/