Aydın Sefa Akay

The UN secretary-general did not reappoint Hague court judge Aydin Sefa Akay under pressure from Ankara after he was convicted of belonging to a ‘terrorist organisation’ alleged to have staged a coup attempt in Turkey.

A U.N. court condemned Turkey on June 15 for sentencing one of its top judges to seven years in jail on charges of having links to what the government and prosecutors call the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ), accused of being behind the July 2016 coup attempt.

The demand to release a top United Nations court judge is "void," Turkish authorities said in a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council. 

Turkey put a top United Nations court judge on trial on March 15 on charges of links to the group blamed for the failed July 15, 2016, coup, in a case that has caused anger and held up legal proceedings over the Rwanda genocide.

Turkey is compromising the judicial independence of a United Nations war crimes tribunal by holding one of its judges in detention despite an order to release him, the court ruled, referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

A United Nations judge currently under arrest in Turkey over alleged links to the Gülenist network does not have diplomatic immunity to bar him from his imprisonment, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ said in a televised interview on Feb. 1. 

A United Nations court on Jan. 31 ordered Turkey to release a judge detained in a crackdown after last year's failed coup attempt so that he can resume his work on an appeals case.

Turkey was "ordered to cease all legal proceedings against Judge Aydın Sefa Akay and to take all necessary measures to ensure his release... no later than 14 February," the tribunal said.

Arrested judge Aydın Sefa Akay, who also serves as a United Nations judge, has filed an appeal for his diplomatic immunity following the U.N. Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals' (MICT) rejection of Turkey's response to the U.N. Secretary-General, the MICT has told the Hürriyet Daily News. 

A leading U.N. war crimes judge on Nov. 9 called on Turkey to free one of its justices who was arrested in September as part of an investigation into the July 15 failed coup attempt.
The detention of Aydın Sefa Akay, 66, has paralyzed an appeals hearing in Rwanda, judge Theodor Meron, the president of the United Nations' Mechanism for International Tribunals, told the United Nations.