Some 25 Balyoz convicts acquitted in first retrial hearing

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

Twenty-five suspects in the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) coup plot case were acquitted by Istanbul’s 4th Heavy Penal Court on June 24, less than a week after the Constitutional Court ordered a retrial of all 230 convicts.

The court also ruled that the files of the other 63 former convicts who stood in the retrial would be further assessed in future sessions.

The 4th Heavy Penal Court had ruled on June 19 to release all the convicted suspects in the Balyoz case, after the Court had ruled a day earlier that their rights had been violated during the trial.

The released convicts include retired general and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) lawmaker Engin Alan, who took his oath in Parliament earlier on June 24.

The ruling also came at a time when the government attempted to find a legal means of formulating a retrial for the convicts, after abolishing the Specially Authorized Courts in March that had conducted the coup plot trials.