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Federal prosecutors in German said on Fridaythat they were seeking the arrest of a Turkish national based in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“The accused is adequately suspected of having been active for a foreign intelligence service,” prosecutors said.
The word “adequately” is used rather than what one might translate as “urgently” to indicate a slightly lower degree of confidence in the allegations on the part of German law enforcement.
The man, identified only as Turkish citizen Mehmet K., remains at large according to authorities.
What is he accused of?
German authorities suspect he was helping Turkish police and intelligence agencies to track supposed supporters of Fethullah Gulen, the recently-deceased US-based cleric and rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused of being the mastermind behind a failed coup attempt in 2016.
“Mehmet K. turned to Turkish police and intelligence agencies several times in anonymous letters between September 2018 and August 2021,” prosecutors wrote. “In these, he conveyed contact details and further information of people from his orbit in the Düren area, whom he assigned to the movement of the Islamic preacher Gulen.”
Düren is a city of around 93,000 residents to the west of Cologne, not far from the border to the Netherlands.
Gulen died aged 83 last month in the US. The former ally of Erdogan had denied any involvement in 2016’s apparent coup attempt.
Turkish authorities arrested tens of thousands of people in the aftermath.
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