Bounty worth 4 mln liras issued for major coup suspect Adil Öksüz

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

The Turkish Interior Ministry has updated its list of individuals linked to terrorist organizations, adding Adil Öksüz, one of major suspects of the July 15 coup attempt, and putting a 4 million-Turkish Lira bounty on his head.

Another 36 suspects were also placed on the list for alleged links to Gülen.

According to the list revealed by the ministry, whoever aids in Öksüz’s capture by Turkish authorities will be rewarded with 4,000,000 liras.

Seven other suspects with links to the Gülenist organization are also listed in the red category, which features the highest bounties.

Öksüz, whom the Turkish government declared as the Gülenist organization’s “imam of the Air Force” and a leader of the plot in Turkey, was briefly detained after being found adjacent to the Akıncı Air Base in Ankara immediately after the coup. Sent to a court with a demand for his arrest, Öksüz was tried but freed on probation, after which he went on the run.

Meanwhile, police in the Kuşadası district of the western province of Aydın on Oct. 25 foiled a plan by three suspected members of the Gülenist organization to flee the country with a group of Syrian refugees.

Joined a group of 59 Syrian refugees who attempted to cross the Aegean Sea to land on the Greek island of Samos, three men were identified as Turkish nationals after police carried out an operation and captured 62 people. 

The real identities of the three men, who were found to be from the southern province of Hatay and were seen to be speaking fluent Arabic, were realized only after police officers grew suspicious of them.  

The suspects identified by their initials M.P, A.S.D and A.U. later confessed that they were being sought by authorities as part of the Hatay-based probe into the Gülenist organization. 

In another incident, the lawyer of a convict who was given multiple sentences for spraying pepper gas on a woman during the 2013 Gezi protests in what became one of the most symbolic images from the weeks of protests against the government, demanded his client be retried.

Funda Sadıkahmet Alp, the lawyer for police officer Fatih Zengin, claimed that both the prosecution authorities and the police chief, who gave the order to spray gas on victim Ceyda Sungur, were members of the Gülenist organization.

In her application to an Istanbul court on Oct. 25, the lawyer noted that both the judge and the prosecutors of the case had been prosecuted and that the judge in the case, Muzaffer İren, had been arrested. 

The lawyer also recalled that police chief Ramazan Emekli, who gave an order to Zengin to aim at the victim, was dismissed from his position as part of a probe into the Gülenists. 

Meanwhile, in a drug operation carried out in the Bağcılar district of Istanbul, police raided the house of a suspect, detaining him and also capturing his cousin, identified as Tahsin K., who was sought for links to the Gülenists.