The media watchdog of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) criticized the Ukrainian government on July 19 for extraditing a blogger accused of getting hyperlinks to the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ)–the institution Ankara blames for a failed coup in 2016.
Ukrainian authorities confirmed that journalist and blogger Yusuf İnan, who Ankara believes acted as a social media expert for FETÖ, was shanded overto the Turkish authorities after Kiev obtained a request to extradite him last October.
İnan, an editor of an internet information outlet and former editor of the Yerel Gündem newspaper and its internet site, was detained by authorities in southern Ukraine in advance this month.
“Journalists ought not to be prosecuted for expressing their reviews, and it’s a serious problem that an important journalist was so extradited to Turkey,” stated OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir.
“I ask the Ukrainian authorities to make clear whether or not his freedom of expression and right to appeal had been taken into consideration,” Desir said.
A spokesman for Ukrainian prosecutors insisted that “everything had been finished in accordance with the countrywide rules,” Agence France-Presse suggested on July 20.
“In July, the request was granted and he was extradited to the Turkish government,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko instructed AFP.
İnan, who is married to a Ukrainian woman and had a residence permit, was expelled from Ukraine as a part of an operation by means of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) against a “terrorist group,” Anadoly company stated.
Earlier this week, a nearby police spokeswoman, Olena Berezhna, instructed AFP that İnan was arrested in the southern city of Mykolaiv by the Ukrainian security service, who removed him to an undisclosed area.
He became the second Turkish citizen to be sent back to Turkey from Ukraine within days after MİT suspect Salih Zeki Yiğit was flown back to Turkey from Ukraine in a similar operation.
İnan was remanded in custody in Turkey’s west, and the judiciary personnel prosecuted him.
İnan turned into added before a court within the western Aegean province of İzmir and remanded in custody on charges of being a member of an armed terror corporation, state-run Anadolu Agency said on July 19, citing assets, who requested not to be named due to restrictions on speakme to the media.
Separately, six suspects arrested in Istanbul were remanded in custody on July 19 over a FETÖ plot associated with calling MİT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan and different MİT officers to endure testimony in 2012.
A courtroom in the capital Ankara additionally sentenced 28 former navy judges and prosecutors whose names were listed in a “martial law courts project listing” seized during the coup attempt.
The 28 suspects acquired prison sentences ranging from over six to nine years for being participants of an armed terrorist group.
