5 arrested after threatening Turkish prosecutor with death

Duvar English

Turkish authorities on Oct. 14 arrested five suspects in connection with the death threats made against Terror and Organized Crimes Investigation Prosecutor worked under Istanbul’s Büyükçekmece Chief Prosecutor's Office for the release of suspects arrested in a crime syndicate investigation.

While conducting an investigation into the healthcare workers' unjust insurance profits from transferring newborns to private hospitals and related deaths of 12 infants, the suspects’ lawyers threatened the prosecutor on Aug. 30, 2024, first over the phone and then in his office. 

They “warned” that if the prosecutor did not facilitate the release of certain suspects, there would be “an assassination attempt on him and harm would be done to his family.”

One of the suspects made a confessional statement and said, “one of the suspects offered me 100,000 dollars to shoot someone in the courthouse and said that he would arrange for a driver and a motorcycle to be used after the attack.”

An investigation later was conducted into how information about the prosecutor's relatives and where they lived was leaked, and a recording device was placed in the prosecutor's office.

The lawyer, who was identified as having contacted the confessor, was recorded explicitly threatening the prosecutor with death during a meeting. 

The investigation revealed that the prosecutor's personal and information regarding his relatives and family had been queried by three gendarmerie personnel on a date before the threat.

Eleven suspects were detained in the operation organized within the scope of the investigation. After the procedures were completed, three gendarmerie personnel were released and eight suspects, including two lawyers, were referred to the courthouse on Oct. 14.

Turkish authorities arrested five suspects and released three under judicial control measures.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor who received the death threat has forwarded the indictment concerning the 47 suspects, including doctors and nurses, to the Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor's Office.

These suspects, who were found to have acted in collaboration with individuals working at the emergency call center, allegedly transferred newborns to pre-arranged private hospitals’ neonatal units to obtain unjust insurance profits from the Social Security Organization (SGK). Among them, 22 suspects have been arrested.