Court hands CHP MP Enis Berberoğlu 25 years in jail in intel trucks case

An Istanbul court on June 14 sentenced main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Enis Berberoğlu on spying charges over a report on intelligence trucks bound for Syria.

A Cumhuriyet report in May 2015 claimed that trucks allegedly owned by the National Intelligence Agency (MİT), Turkey's state intelligence service, were found to contain weapons and ammunition that were headed for Syria when they were stopped and searched in southern Turkey in early 2014. 

The prosecutor had sought a life sentence for Berberoğlu for announcing information that was supposed to stay secret.

An indictment was previously prepared against the lawmaker for giving the footage of the Turkish intelligence trucks to former Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar. 

The party called the ruling "an intimidation attempt" targeting the opposition.

"The imprisonment of our lawmaker is a bitter example showing that the judiciary is under complete control of the executive organ," CHP deputy group chairman Engin Altay told reporters outside Istanbul's Çağlayan courthouse.

Meanwhile, the party's deputies quit a plenary session in parliament to protest Berberoğlu's arrest.

"It is a decision to obstruct journalism," Cumhuriyet's Ankara Bureau Chief Erdem Gül told reporters outside the court.