Nordic Monitor

57) In the meantime, police investigators who identified him as the kidnapper and linked him to al-Qaeda as well as the prosecutors who pressed criminal charges were all removed by the Erdogan government, with some jailed on false charges.

56) If no new charges are brought against him and if nothing untoward happens during the appeal, Abu Banat will be set free into society.

55) The case is yet another example of how Turkish intelligence has conducted shady business with jihadists including those who beheaded people & terrified innocent civilians in Syria. When the operative was caught, he was protected from the full reach of the criminal justice.

54) Eliya, the Syrian national who accompanied the metropolitans, was the only witness from the group who was left alive. His whereabouts are unknown, although he gave an interview to a Lebanese newspaper about his kidnappers after the incident.

53) This claim was originally raised in an article posted on dissident Chechen website the Kavkaz Center. Metin also claimed that Abu Banat’s group was also responsible for the first chemical attack, which took place in the Khan al-Assal district of Aleppo in 2013

52) Turkish lawyer Erkan Metin, who has extensively investigated the abduction of the clergymen, believe they were killed right after the kidnapping, not by beheading but by bombs strapped to their bodies by Abu Banat and his men.

51) The foreign ministry said the clerics were first taken to the village of Ancura in Aleppo and later transported to Sermade Deridize in Idlib for an exchange with Assad regime forces. The foreign ministry shared basically the same intelligence with the police on April 26, 2013

50) For example, a secret document sent to the Istanbul Police Department by the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Directorate of Intelligence on July 2, 2013 stated that the metropolitans were believed to have been kidnapped by a group known as Katibat al-Muhajireen, led by Abu Banat.

49) The group was affiliated with ISIL for a while before he pledged allegiance to the Turkish-backed al-Nusra Front. Most of the information about Abu Banat was confirmed in secret Turkish government documents.

48) Abu Banat had served as the deputy of Abu Omar and set up a command post in Turkey for screening foreign jihadists who arrived in Syria through Turkish territory. The group operated under Jaysh al-Muhajirin wa al-Ansar (formerly Katibat al-Muhajireen), led by Omar Shishani.

47) The gunmen are believed to have been part of a group called Jund al-Khilafa, led by Abu Omar al-Kuwaiti (also known as Hussein Laari), who was tapped by Turkish intelligence agency MIT to coordinate attacks on regime forces in rural areas of Aleppo.

45) The metropolitans were accompanied by Fouad Eliya and driver Diyakos Fathallah Kabud. When they passed through a checkpoint in the Mansoura region, which was controlled by FSA, they were trailed by a jeep and stopped some 700 meters later by eight gunmen.

44) He asked if there were any formal requests for information about or the extradition of Abu Banat by foreign countries or the UN. Although the government is obligated to respond to such inquiries within two weeks under Turkish law, the Erdogan gov't simply ignored the question

43) The government did not respond to a parliamentary question submitted by opposition lawmaker Tuma Celik on October 28, 2018 that asked why the authorities did not file charges against Abu Banat for the murder of the metropolitans.

42) This is the time-buying tactic the Erdogan government has been using to weather the international pressure arising from the Abu Banat case for fear of being implicated and even incriminated for the role of Turkish intelligence agency MIT.

40) For example, the 16th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals, which deals with terrorism cases, received the appeal from a lower court on July 31, 2015 but decided on Jan. 1, 2018 that his case file was incomplete.

39) The Justice Ministry reportedly turned down a request by a US prosecutor who wanted to interrogate Abu Banat as part of an investigation launched in the US. In the meantime, his appeal was continuously reshuffled, perhaps deliberately.

38) Although both the Russians and the Americans have taken an interest in Abu Banat’s case & in fact Moscow sought his extradition based on a criminal case against him back in Chechnya, Turkish authorities have always balked at these requests and decided to keep him in Turkey.