Turkish ISIL agent charged with running underage Syrian prostitution ring

Dinçer Gökçe

The ISIL members are being tried in connection to a deadly March 20 attack in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde. DHA Photo

A Turkish man, who is allegedly involved in the trafficking of jihadists on the Turkey-Syria border, has also been accused of forcing Syrian refugees into prostitution.

The case has come to light as part of a 17-folder file in the case that was opened after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) March 2014 attack on gendarmes in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde, which includes additional charges against 11 suspects, Hürriyet has learned.

One of the suspects, the 29-year-old Ahmet Yumuşak, is charged with forcing underage Syrian refugees in Turkey to prostitution in the southern province of Hatay. In his phone calls, wiretapped by Turkish law enforcement officers, Yumuşak discusses prices with his “customers,” adding that “the 16-year-old one is terrific.”

Ayhan Orli, another suspect in the 17-folder case who is currently on the board of an association called the Syria Turkmen Community, is charged with sending to Syria aluminium powder, a material that can be used in explosives.

According to the criminal file, an officer from Yayladağı Police Center in Hatay cooperated with Orli in smuggling out 50 kg of aluminium powder to Ahrar ash-Sham, a jihadist group in Syria.

The case originally had three foreign ISIL militants as suspects, who were directly involved in the killing of a Turkish gendarmerie soldier and a police officer in Niğde last year, according to the prosecutor.

The main perpetrator was identified as Chendrim Ramadani, a Swiss national who was first reported as being from Kosovo. Benjamin Xu, a German citizen, and Mohammad Zakiri, a Macedonian, have also been caught alongside Ramadani.

The next session of the trial is set to be held in Niğde on March 5.