Soldiers who took part in a failed coup being escorted to court near Ankara last year
Soldiers who took part in a failed coup being escorted to court near Ankara last yearADEM ALTAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Two Turkish commandos who sought asylum in Greece over their alleged involvement in the botched coup against President Erdogan have gone missing from police custody and may already be in the hands of Turkey, their lawyer said yesterday.
Halit Cetin and Fatih Arik fled to Greece months after their unit, the SAT special operations force, led the failed Turkish coup in July 2016. The men, dubbed “public enemy No 1” by the Turkish government, claimed political asylum and were placed in detention for 18 months for illegal entry.
However, according to Stavroula Tomara, their lawyer, the men went missing on August 20, the day the detention order ran out, and may have been spirited back to Turkey in a prisoner exchange.
“I went to collect…