Prosecutors who ordered stopping of MİT trucks dismissed

ANKARA

The trucks were stopped on Jan. 19, causing uproar as the government slammed the prosecutors and soldiers involved in the operation by arguing that both the truck and the personnel were protected by the legal immunity of the MİT. DHA Photo

Five Turkish prosecutors who ordered the stopping of state-owned trucks purportedly carrying weapons to Syria have been dismissed by Turkey’s top judiciary body.

The state-run Anadolu Agency reported the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), the top judiciary body in the country, dismissed on Jan. 14 prosecutors Süleyman Bağrıyanık, Ahmet Karaca, Aziz Takçı, Özcan Şişman and Yaşar Kavalcıklıoğlu, who ordered the stopping of trucks owned by the National Intelligence Agency (MİT), Turkey’s state intelligence agency, for allegedly carrying weapons to those fighting in Syria.

The top judiciary body stated the prosecutors had committed acts which violated the dignity and honor of the prosecution profession as well as the reputation of a public officiary.

In January 2014, Hatay Police Department Counterterrorism 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 carrying weapons and ammunition 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 as the venue was beyond the police’s area of authority.