‘Selam Tevhid’ case to be combined with MİT trucks case

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

The Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals has ruled for combining a case regarding Syria-bound Turkish Central Intelligence Organization (MİT) trucks, and the case of “Selam Tevhid,” a terror group the government alleges to have been formed to justify the massive wiretapping scandal, with U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen as its main suspect. 

The ruling came at the sixth hearing of the MİT trucks case, which is being held confidentially at the 16th Penal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals, on April 14.  

The suspects of the case, who include former Adana chief public prosecutor Süleyman Bağrıyanık, former Adana gendarmerie commander, staff colonel Özkan Çokay, former prosecutors Aziz Takçı, Özcan Şişman and Ahmet Karaca, are being charged with “attempting to overthrow the state” and “revealing information” about the “state’s security and political activities” when they stopped the trucks for a search in January 2014.    

Trucks belonging to the MİT were stopped by a prosecutor who had gendarmerie soldiers search vehicles in the southern province of Adana before they crossed into Syria. The contents of the trucks, claimed by the government to be “humanitarian aid for Turkmens” but were in fact weapons and ammunition, were exposed in controversial report run by daily Cumhüriyet. The report’s two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, are currently on trial for terrorist charges. Meanwhile, the Turkish government accused followers of Gülen in the judiciary and security institutions of illegally ordering the search.

The “Selam Tevhid” case has 122 suspects, including journalist Emre Uslu and former police chiefs Yurt Atayün and Ömer Köse. The suspects are charged with “attempting to topple the government of the Republic of Turkey and preventing it from fully or partially conducting its duties.”