Syria Support Movement solidarity with the Syrian people
Syria-bound trucks operated by MİT were searched in January 2014 after prosecutors received tip-offs that they are illegally carrying arms to Syria. (Photo: DHA)
May 17, 2015, Today’s Zaman
Seven military staff, including high-ranking officers, were arrested on Sunday as part of the ongoing investigation into the January 2014 interception of Syria-bound trucks belonging to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT).
The İstanbul Prosecutor’s Office issued on Friday detention orders against 10 officers who work at gendarmerie crime units in Ankara and İstanbul. The officers, who were detained on the same day, were questioned by the prosecutor’s office. After questioning, the officers were referred to court, which ordered arrest of seven of them on Sunday.
In January 2014, a number of trucks, which were found to belong to MİT, were stopped by gendarmes in two separate incidents in the southern provinces of Hatay and Adana, after prosecutors received tip-offs that they were carrying arms to Syria.
Although the government has claimed that the trucks were transporting humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community in Syria, opposition voices have continued to question why, if the operation was within the law, the government intervened to prevent the trucks from being searched.
Four former prosecutors and a former gendarme were imprisoned after a court ordered their arrest due to their role in the search of trucks allegedly carrying weapons to opposition groups in Syria, a move which came shortly after government figures, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accused the officials of “treason.”
Former Adana Chief Public Prosecutor Süleyman Bağrıyanık, former Adana Deputy Chief Prosecutor Ahmet Karaca, Adana Prosecutors Aziz Takçı and Özcan Şişman and former Adana provincial gendarmerie commander Col. Özkan Çokay were all recently arrested.
The detention orders are thought to be part of an ongoing politically motivated “witch hunt” against police investigators who uncovered the highly secretive Iran-backed terrorist network Tawhid-Salam, which is alleged to have ties to senior Turkish government officials. The alleged evidence linking the Tawhid-Salam investigation that began in 2011 and the interception of the MİT trucks remains controversial.
