Ankara Indicts Six Turks Deported from Kosovo

Photo: EPA/ ERDEM SAHIN

Turkish news agency Anadolu reported on Wednesday that the prosecution is demanding sentences ranging from 16 years and six months to 28 years and six months for the six.

The six Turks have been held in detention in a Turkish prison for a year since their controversial deportation.

They are: Cihan Ozkan, Kahraman Demirez, Hasan Huseyin Gunakan, Mustafa Erdem, Osman Karakaya and Yusuf Karabina.

Kosovo officials have long claimed that the deportation caught them by surprise, claiming they were not informed about it.

But BIRN reported last week that the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, AKI, conducted the operation, "taking over" Kosovo Police offices in order to lead the deportation operation and telephoning orders to police officers "every two or three minutes".

On the day of the operation, Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said the six Turkish citizens, who all had permission to be in Kosovo, had been deported without his knowledge. "As Prime Minister, I was not informed about this operation," he wrote on Facebook.

Claiming that misuse of the police and the intelligence agency had taken place, Haradinaj demanded the removal of the then head of the AKI, Driton Gashi, and the Interior Minister, Flamur Sefaj.

President Hashim Thaci also claimed he had not been informed about the operation.

But a report compiled by a US human rights law expert, Tienmu Ma, obtained by BIRN, has revealed that the plans started 17 days before the operation took place, and the Interior Ministry was well briefed.

"On 12 and 19 March, 2018, a senior official from the AKI went personally to the Department for Citizenship, Asylum and Migration [DCAM] in the Ministry of Interior to review the records of six Turkish nationals,...