July 19, 2018•Update: July 19, 2018
By Mustafa Yildirim
IZMIR, Turkey
A key suspect in the 2016 defeated coup in Turkey who was just brought back from Ukraine has now been remanded in custody, judicial sources said on Thursday.
Yusuf Inan, a Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO)-linked social media expert, had fled to Ukraine after the 2016 defeated coup attempt, and was brought back to Turkey on Sunday in an operation by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT).
Inan was brought before a court in the Aegean province of Izmir and remanded in custody on charges of being a member of an armed terror organization, said the sources, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
He allegedly had an active role in FETO’s influence operations on social media.
Inan was already wanted in Izmir for being a member of an armed terror organization.
Separately, six suspects arrested in Istanbul were remanded in custody on Thursday over a FETO plot related to calling MIT Undersecretary Hakan Fidan and other MIT officials to bear testimony in 2012.
A court in the capital Ankara also sentenced 28 former military judges and prosecutors whose names were found in a "martial law courts assignment list" seized during FETO's coup attempt.
The 28 received prison sentences ranging from over six years to nearly nine for being members of an armed terrorist group.
FETO and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured.
Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.
* Muhammed Enes Can and Enes Paksoy from Istanbul, and Baris Kilic and Ismet Karakas from Ankara, contributed to this report.
