Prosecutor of Turkish intel trucks case detained in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

One of the prosecutors in a controversial case into trucks belonging to the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) case was detained in Istanbul on April 17, Doğan News Agency has reported. 

Yaşar Kavalcıoğlu, a former prosecutor in Hatay’s Kırıkhan district, was caught by police due to suspicious behavior as he was about to board a bus at the Harem bus terminal in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district.

Kavalcıoğlu moved away from the bus after he observed police who were conducting routine ID checks, according to police officials. 

Kavalcıoğlu was stopped by police officers who demanded to see his identity card. The man said he had no identity card but that he was a prosecutor. Police decided to take him to a police station after inspecting his prosecutor’s ID. 

Police determined the suspect as the prosecutor who had issued a warrant in the MİT trucks case.

Police also seized another piece of ID, four memory cards, a flash disk, a tablet PC, 790 Turkish Liras and 600 dollars after searching his person.

Kavalcıoğlu had been dismissed from his post for allegedly violating national security over a 2014 incident where trucks belonging to the MİT were stopped and searched near Syria.

He was one of the former prosecutors facing legal action from the Turkey’s Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) over his role in the raid.  

In January 2014, Hatay Police Department Counter-terrorism and Organized Crime unit officers stopped a truck which had embarked from the southern town of Reyhanlı, a district in Hatay province that borders Syria, on a tipoff that it was allegedly carrying arms to Syria. The truck was stopped near a gendarmerie outpost on the Reyhanlı-Kırıkhan road. The driver and two other men in the truck did not allow the police to conduct a search of the cargo, arguing that they were not authorized to do so.