Court receives ‘Sledgehammer’ coup plot indictment

In addition to Baransu, journalists Ahmet Altan, Yıldıray Oğur, Yasemin Çongar and Tuncay Opçin were included as suspects in the indictment, with Ahmet Zeki Üçok, Hakan Büyük, Çetin Doğan, Kadir Sağdıç, Ahmet Bertan Nogaylaroğlu, Nedim Ulusan and the Turkish General Staff acting as plaintiffs. 

Baransu is charged with crimes of “forming an organization to commit crime,” “damaging documents that are related to the state’s security as well as using them for purposes that are different than their original purpose and seizing and stealing them with deceit,” “revealing information concerning the state’s security and political well-being that should have been kept confidential” and “forming and administrating an armed terror organization and making terrorist propaganda.”

With the court’s approval of the indictment, the suspects are expected be in the dock in the following days.
 
Balyoz was an alleged military coup plot targeting the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and drafted in 2003. The military is alleged to have planned drastic measures to foment unrest in the country in order to remove the AKP from power. The measures included bombing two major mosques in Istanbul, an assault on a military museum by people disguised as religious extremists and the raising of tension with Greece through an attack on a Turkish plane that was to be blamed on the Aegean neighbor.