Recordings of Turkey's coup night were burned by putschists: Indictment

The indictment regarding events on the night of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt at the General Staff Headquarters in Ankara, where senior commanders were taken captive, has said soldiers attempting the coup burned memory disks, including recordings of what happened at the HQ, after realizing the coup had been unsuccessful.

The joint indictment submitted to an Ankara court on March 3 on the July 2016 coup attempt revealed that the suspects accused of managing the coup attempt from the General Staff Headquarters - brigadier Mehmet Partigöç, staff colonel Orhan Yıkılkan and rear admiral Sinan Sürer - left the barracks at 03:50 on the morning of July 16. 

"At 05:10 a.m., Gökhan Eski and Ahmet İlhan Ayşan entered the system room of the image-viewing center belonging to the headquarters. At about 5:30 p.m., it was understood that the power line supplying eight IP cameras in the headquarters was disabled, and the imaging and camera recordings were turned off," the indictment read. 

"It was determined that at 06:11 a.m., Ahmet İlhan Ayşan, Bünyamin Tuner, Emin Anar, Recep Özkan and İsmail Aydın brought bags and boxes, including storage units where the images of the General Staff Headquarters building were recorded, to Ayyıldız Street, where the tanks were parked. They then crushed the units under the tanks. At 07:03, it was understood that crushed storage units were brought to the filling station and burned there," the indictment added. 

'The coup was to begin on July 16 at 03:00'

The indictment states that the notes, including the abduction of the Second Chief of the General Staff Yaşar Gürel, were found in a shoe after a search of Major Mehmet Akkurt's house.  

"According to the plan note seized in the...