Prosecutors are looking prison terms of up at 30 for 11 defendants, including Iranian spies, on charges of an attempted kidnapping of a defecting Iranian military commander in the eastern province of van, which shares a border with Iran.
MA, a pilot with the rank of Major in the Iranian army, had filed a criminal complaint last yearclaiming that unknown people had tried to remove it. Eight people have been arrested in September 2021 in connection with The Incident in a joint operation of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the Turkish police.
An indictment approved by the Fourth High Criminal Court in fetch prison terms for accused on charges of espionage, membership in a criminal organization and attempted kidnapping. The indictment says the defendants attempted to abduct MA, who took shelter in Turkey in 2018 after illegally crossing the border, several times but they failed Everytime.
MA had told investigators that in one example, he was taken to a village in Neighborhood Van’s Özalp by CS, one of the defendants he originally negotiated with and paid to travel to Canada as an illegal immigrant. He claimed CS sought to hand him over to Iranian intelligence there. in to exchange for $20,000 but this attempt failed when intelligence officers have not show up. He said he found out of this plot much later and he was the victim of another kidnapping attempt in August 2021, when he faced CS in that of the latter office for reimbursement. He said he and his wife were forced into a car but when she screamed and shouted that they were kidnapped, the suspects took their out of the car and fled.
“I was aware of kidnapping attempts against other Iranian soldiers who sought refuge in Turkey by Iranian intelligence. I believe those people who tried to take me away acted in Cooperation with Iranian intelligence,” he told investigators. He said they tried to take it away again, with ugly of ME, one of witnesses in the case who reported the attempt to the police. ME told investigators the defendants offered him $10,000 and asked him to lace up MA’s drinks with a sleeping pill. “They told me to put him to sleep and contact them. I pretended to move on with their plan and called the police. If MA was removed, he would be executed in Iran,” he said.
The indictment says the accused carried out a reconnaissance around the MA home for three days and were in possession of “equipment” like band to tie it up when they were detained. This also says that they found various photos of MY in possession of suspects as well as confidential documents in their residences during the raids.
the prosecutors also says the suspects plotted the kidnapping while in Iran and SH, one of the accused, was one of the brains of the attempt and monitored the process from Iran.
MA told Voice of American Farsi Service (VOA) in a meeting last year that he was threatened when he refused to be deployed to Syria and decided to flee the country. He said he alerted Turkish intelligence services when he became a suspect of a woman who contacted him. “The Turkish intelligence services have put son phone tapped and found out that the woman was in contact with an Iranian intelligence agent and bought him tranquilizers,” he said.
It is not the first times Iranian suspects plotted kidnappings and murders in Turkey. Earlier this year, MIT uncovered a plot by Iranian agents to kill an Israeli-Turkish tycoon.
