ISTANBUL: A Turkish court has issued another formal arrest order for Istanbul’s jailed mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on suspicion of “political espionage,” state-owned Anadolu news agency said on Monday, stepping up a long-running opposition crackdown.
Imamoglu, a key rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in jail since March pending trial on separate corruption charges, received a fresh jail sentence in July for insulting and threatening the chief Istanbul prosecutor.
Imamoglu denies all charges against him.
He denied the latest charge in court on Sunday and in a statement from prison on Friday.
“Such a slander, lie and conspiracy wouldn’t even cross the devil’s mind!” he said on X. “We are facing a shameful indecency that can’t be described with words.”
Anadolu said an Istanbul court issued the arrest order overnight for Imamoglu and two others, including Merdan Yanardag, editor-in-chief of television news channel Tele1.
The channel, which is critical of the government, was seized by the state on Friday, citing the espionage accusations.
The latest court ruling accuses Imamoglu of engaging in graft to raise funds for his presidential candidacy and espionage to secure international support, the agency said.
Hundreds of members and elected leaders of Imamoglu’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) face an array of corruption-related charges in a crackdown the party calls politicized and anti-democratic.
The CHP denies graft accusations as a politicized attempt by the government to remove electoral threats against Erdogan, a charge the government rejects.
But the opposition got some respite from the pressure on Friday, after another court dismissed a bid to to oust the CHP’S leader and annul its 2023 congress.
Turkiye court orders arrest of Istanbul’s jailed mayor for ‘political espionage’
https://arab.news/n3mtj
Turkiye court orders arrest of Istanbul’s jailed mayor for ‘political espionage’
- Imamoglu, a key rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in jail since March pending trial on separate corruption charges, received a fresh jail sentence in July for insulting and threatening the chief Istanbul prosecutor
- The latest court ruling accuses Imamoglu of engaging in graft to raise funds for his presidential candidacy and espionage to secure international support
Thirty four Australians released from Syrian camp holding Daesh affiliated families
- Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children
ROJ CAMP: Syrian Kurdish forces on Monday released 34 Australians from a camp holding families of suspected Daesh militants in northern Syria, saying they would be flown to Australia from Damascus.
Hukmiya Mohamed, a co-director of Roj camp, told Reuters that the 34 Australians had been released to members of their families who had come to Syria for the release. They were put on small buses for Damascus.
Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children.
Thousands of people believed to be linked to Daesh militants have been held at Roj and a second camp, Al-Hol, since the militant group was driven from its final territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.
Syrian government forces seized swathes of northern Syria from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in January, before agreeing a ceasefire on January 29.
The US military last week completed a mission to transfer 5,700 adult male Daesh detainees from Syria to Iraq.
