Kosovo PM Haradinaj says he was not informed about Turkey’s FETÖ operation in Pristina
PRISTINA
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj on March 29 said Turkey had not informed him about an operation in which Turkish intelligence officers brought six people suspected of links to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) from Pristina to Turkey earlier in the day.
“Today, in the operation conducted by #Kosovo Intelligence Agency, 6 Turkey citizens were deported,” Haradinaj said on Twitter.
“Myself, as the Prime Minister, was not informed about this operation, therefore I will act according to my legal and constitutional competencies,” he added.
On March 29, Turkey’s intelligence agency brought six people suspected of links to FETÖ from Kosovo to Turkey in an operation carried out with the cooperation of the former’s spy agency, the Hürriyet Daily News had learnt from security sources.
All six suspects were detained by Kosovo law enforcement early March 29 as a result of cooperation between the relevant government offices of the two countries and were handed at the airport to a special team deployed to Pristina by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT), the sources had said.
The suspects were later brought back to Istanbul on a special jet and were detained by the Turkish police. They are accused of being members of FETÖ, blamed for the July 2016 coup attempt that left more than 250 dead and thousands injured.
It is believed that thousands of FETÖ-linked high-level military and civilian bureaucrats as well as other people have fled Turkey before and after the coup attempt.
Turkey has long been exerting efforts for the extradition of these people, including FETÖ leader Fethullah Gülen who is in self-exile in the United States, from all over the world.
A few hundreds of FETÖ-linked suspects have already been brought back to Turkey as a result of political and intelligence cooperation with countries such as Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. But this event marked the first time a FETÖ suspect was brought in from the European continent, sources said.