Three ex-colonels to be compensated over unfair arrest in coup plot case

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

Three former colonels, who were acquitted in the “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) coup plot case after being tried under arrest for over a year, will be paid compensation, according to recent court rulings. 

 In the compensation cases seen separately by the Ankara 2nd, 3rd and 7th Court of Serious Crimes, the court board ruled three colonels be paid for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, considering their “unfair arrest, the methods of arrest, the lengthiness of their arrests, and the social and economic status of the applicants.”

According to the ruling by the 7th High Penal Court, retired Gendarmerie Col. Hakan Sargın will be paid 12,000 Turkish Liras for pecuniary damages and 500,000 liras for non-pecuniary damages. The 3rd and 4th High Penal Courts ruled former Gendarmerie Colonel Nail İlbey and former Gendarmerie Colonel Kahraman Dikmen be paid 400,000 liras and 250,000 liras for non-pecuniary damages they suffered respectively.

Mahir Işıkay, the mutual lawyer of the complainants, said in his petition, submitted to a High Penal Court in July 2015, that Nail İlbey was unfairly detained for 21 months while Dikmen remained under arrest for over three years and Sargın remained in prison for three-and-a-half years.

“Some 21 months were stolen from my client’s [İlbey] life. The client cannot be okay with the injustice that he witnessed and the fact that he was arrested unfairly for 21 months.  He still bears the negative effects of the injustices that caused a trauma in his soul. İlbey was arrested with charges of ‘being a member of a group that planned to bomb attack to the Eyüp Mosque in Istanbul and preparing a report in line with the plan’ as part of the Balyoz case. These accusations made headlines in written and visual media for days, which caused social trauma for the client,” said Işıkay.